Seeing The Elephant
by I-AM-SiriusLOCKED
Summary: Russia, 1969. The soldier has no name. All he knows is the mission. Today, that mission is a runaway Soviet brat that needs to be dragged back to the right side of the Iron Curtain. The soldier has no soul. He has no feelings, no regrets, nothing to slow him down. But the mission - the girl - isn't half so simple as that. This is the story of how the tin man found his heart.
1. Chapter 1

_"Everything is sex  
Except sex  
Which is power  
_ _Now ask yourself  
Who's screwing you?"_

 _\- Janelle Monae_

It started off like every other beginning of the Winter Soldier: a chair with straps, the hole that the pain left in his head when it went away, and three words.

"Ready to comply."

The guard's eyes flickered up to him for a moment before returning to the brown folder in his hands. "Excellent. We have an extraction for you, soldier, but I am afraid that it is not your usual... environment." The guard laughed at himself, looked to his only company to see if he had done the same, and frowned as he remembered that emotional responses were not what the soldier was crafted for. "It will require you entering the Western world," he continued, his cheeks reddening a little. "Italy, in fact. Naples."

The soldier stared at the unopened file they had handed him. He had not yet been told to read it.

"It's a special request, soldier. All the way from the Kremlin. Emilia Ivanovna, more commonly known as Mimi. Her father is... influential, and cares deeply for his daughter. He pulled some strings to get us involved, since nobody else wanted to go near her with a ten foot pole, much less in Italy. Take a look."

"Kidnap?" asked the soldier, opening the file. There was a picture of a dumpy girl with lacy clothes and a ribbon in her hair, staring vacantly at a point somewhere beyond the camera, and a printed list of specs and attributes.

"Runaway," said his officer. At the bottom of the page, in smudged handwritten ink, was the word 'spoiled'. "She has been 'travelling', as her father puts it, for the last six months. No doubt she would have continued to travel, but she has been fraternising with what we suspect to be American agents, and we do not know how much she knows. Use appropriate force, soldier. No damage, or her father will riot. She will not be compliant. She is used to getting her own way."

The soldier did not care about this. Having committed the information to memory, he stood up and handed the file back to his officer. "Scalphunters?"

"No, merely collectors of information. She is quite safe with the Americans - at least, as safe as one can be with creatures of corruption such as those - but she is a risk to national security. Deep shadow, soldier. It must look as if she chose to disappear of her own accord. You will be dropped off in Berlin. Bring her back to the frat point, please. We will handle the rest. Confirm, please."

"Extraction brief confirmed." The dumpy girl sat in the centre of the white space inside his head. "Target: Emilia Ivanovna. Window: forty-eight. Shadow, no visible effects. Leeway?"

"Leeway permitted."

"Specification confirmed. Brief complete."

"Excellent. Well, soldier, I will see you and Miss Ivanovna in two days."

%

New memories were like a scab that the soldier could not resist picking at. He kept returning to what he knew of Emilia Ivanovna, not because he was struggling to remember, but because it was the only thing he had in his head to return to. It wasn't even like they were current - he had gone to Naples, found an empty room, and tracked the three American sleeper agents and their companion to Venice all in the last twelve hours, meaning that however good the KGB intel was, the Americans were better. Not better than him, though. It would take a lot more than a sudden change of city to achieve that.

The canals were an issue for movement here, but the buildings were high and close, their shadows lengthy. The soldier ran, determined not to be left behind again, and zeroed in on a small but decadent hotel on the banks of one of the city's main water channels. Then he waited, in the darkness of the docks where his arm did not shine.

The tallest American was the first to leave, his arm around a slender figure. The soldier's eyes narrowed, but when he heard the Italian accent in the woman's voice he relaxed again, since Ivanovna, according to her file, had no knowledge of the language. That was one out, and it was already midnight... that was about as empty as he was going to get.

The building to the left of the hotel was an overcrowded residential one. The soldier walked in without gaining a second glance and, once he reached the highest floor, approached the most poorly-kept front door. With his hand of gleaming metal, he grasped the doorknob and, with skilled fingers, gave it a sharp yank; the bolt snapped and it swung open an inch. He pulled the semi-automatic from its holster between his shoulder blades and walked silently through the tiny apartment, listening to the sounds of snoring coming from the bedroom. The window latch unclasped with a soft click and he pushed the yellowed glass outwards, the swing windows unfamiliar to the man used to the uniform architecture of the Soviet Union. There was a jump of about eight feet between him and the flower-heavy balcony opposite - he pushed himself off of the window with one foot and made the leap with ease, landing on the balls of his feet and with bent knees to soften the sound of the impact. American music came from the suite below, along with laughter and the tinkling of glasses. Female laughter.

The soldier reholstered his gun and dropped down onto the balcony beneath. To their credit, the Americans' reactions were instant: one of them pushed what must have been Ivanovna into the bedroom and locked the door while the other pulled a silenced pistol from the iced champagne bucket and fired twice at him straight through the window. The soldier, who had been expecting this, threw up his left arm to protect his face and twisted his upper body, the bullets going straight past him on either side.

This was going to be almost too easy.

He kicked the fractured glass and it fell in a sparkling shower. He used the temporary cover to step inside and to the left, giving him a beat of confusion to grab a vase and throw it at the agent's head. It caught him square in the face, and the man fell to his knees.

"You... bastard!" he managed to say. "That was genuine Ming Dyna-"

The soldier kicked him in the face and the man flipped backwards, landing unconscious on his back. At that point the other American charged out of the room with a flintlock - the soldier caught the bullet in his metal hand, grabbed the barrel with the other and pushed, cracking the butt of the gun into the man's forehead. He staggered backwards and the soldier drove him into the wall with a punch to the solar plexus, winding him and most likely shattering his ribcage, and as the agent gagged on blood from his lungs the soldier grabbed a pen from the pot on the nearby bureau, a fancy gold-tipped fountain pen to be precise, and plunged it into the man's eye. Then he turned around, picked up the silenced pistol, and shot the first agent in the chest.

The bedroom door wasn't even locked, and the soldier kicked it open with the pistol extended in front of him. His target was a spoiled girl who most likely had led a rather pampered and sheltered life, so if he could creep up on her before she started screaming then -

"Holy shit!"

There was a woman lounging on the bed, smoking a flavoured cigarette and looking at him with some, although less than the usual amount of, alarm. She was dressed like an American in gaudy nylon and plastic, her form was thin and her hair was peroxide blonde, and for one moment the soldier almost doubted that he had the right girl.

 _Woman._

No, not a girl at all. This was definitely a woman.

"Ivanovna," he said, his voice slightly muffled by his mask. The room smelled like tobacco, French perfume, and strawberries. It was setting him on edge.

The woman took a drag on her cigarette, leaving a red lipstick stain on the filter, and looked him up and down. "Who?"

He tried again. "Emilia."

"Oh, I prefer Mimi. Has Daddy sent you?" she asked, swinging her legs off of the bed. "He does worry so. He sent the German Ambassador when I was in Cologne. But you don't look very much like a politician," she continued, sauntering up to him and narrowing her eyes. "I'm sure I recognise you from somewhere."

"No," said the soldier. This… wasn't how targets were supposed to act. She wasn't running, for a start. He almost wished she was. It would make it easier.

"Well, in any case, I'm not going back," Ivanovna said flatly. "And you can't make me."

It struck the soldier that this was almost laughably incorrect. "Two minutes," he told her. He needed to clean up.

"Oh, did you kill Jimmy and George?" Ivanovna asked with faint upset. "That was unnecessary. They were dreadfully nice, you know."

"They were trying to obtain Soviet secrets," the soldier replied. Would it be feasible that they had fought over the girl? Yes, she was pretty enough - leave one body to look like he had lost the duel for her hand, and drop the other, the one with a pen in his eye, in the canal.

Splash.

Water was good for removing traces; it held no footsteps, no scent trails. Ice froze and preserved, but water was the soldier's best friend.

Ivanovna folded her arms as he created a crime scene. "I said, I'm not going back. The food's awful, there's no fashion, and I like it here. So there. I'm not letting Daddy tell me what to do anymore. It's not fair!" Her voice had risen throughout the sentence, and by the last word it had hit the definite inflection of whining.

Having now spent a minute in Ivanovna's company, the tale that the two men had fought out of love for her was now far less believable, but he had started with it and would finish with it. "You get one bag," he told her.

"Aren't you listening to me?"

"No. I'll knock you out if I have to."

"You wouldn't dare!" Ivanovna declared, and faltered under the look he gave her. "My father is -"

"Nikolai Ivanov. He sent me to bring you home. And don't think you can kill me," he added as Ivanovna's greenish-gray eyes wandered to the other gun. "Your boyfriends couldn't."

"They weren't my boyfriends," Ivanovna sniffed. "And they weren't trying to get state secrets out of me, and they most certainly were not American."

The soldier hesitated in dragging the other body across the floor by its ankle. "What?"

"They were German. That accent was awful, couldn't you tell? The men in the flicks do it better. No, I picked them up in Paris. They know something about... something."

"And your father will be fascinated -"

"No, he damn well won't!" Ivanovna cut across him, her cheeks flushing beneath their rouge powder. "Why would he listen to me? But you need to, this instant! I think they were Nazis!"

The soldier stared at her. It hadn't said anything on the file about her having delusions.

"They don't like us lot," Ivanovna explained, "and they were pretending to be American because they thought that would make me like them. But they don't dress like proper Americans, they're too neat. And Americans sleep with you before they start trying to find out about state secrets! These fools didn't even show an interest! I am telling you, Mr - what is your name, anyway?"

The soldier went back to body-dragging. "Don't have one."

"Oh, don't be silly. Everyone has a name. I shall have to give you one if you don't tell me yours - and I'm sure I recognise you beneath all that mask and make-up. Where did you grow up?"

"I didn't."

"Well, that's no answer worth giving."

The soldier surveyed the mess of a room with a professional pride, then returned his attention to Ivanovna. "Can you climb out the window?"

"I'm a popular woman with a strict father, sir. Of course I can climb out of the bloody window - what was that?!"

"Shh!" The soldier grabbed her arm and dragged her out onto the balcony, shoving her against the wall on one side and pressing his back against the other. This way, they would not be seen unless someone was actually on the balcony, facing inside.

The door opened. "Shit," said a voice, "fucking shit."

Ivanovna's eyes widened. "German," she mouthed at him, "he speaks German. Told you so."

"What is it, Ernst? What happened -" a woman began, and cut herself off with a scream. "Someone killed him!"

"Yeah," said the German man, "Hans, the stupid bastard. Fighting over the commie slut. Probably ran off together once the damage was done. It's been a long time coming... Shit."

"I never liked her, Ernst. I told you she was a bad sort, I told you she wasn't worth the risk! What if she had found out about the codes?"

"Well, she didn't, so shut your pretty mouth, Heidi. And you're supposed to be Italian, remember?"

"And you American! What do we do now?"

"Try and get to London with half the manpower, that's what. We'll need to meet Klein back in Paris first, though - do you still remember the codes?"

"Yes. You?"

"Of course I do. Jesus Christ. Klein's never met us before, he doesn't even know what we look like... Hans running off shouldn't cause too much of a problem, and our boy won't tell Ivanovna who we are, not now they've eloped. Pack up, we need to go before the maid finds this shit."

Codes. The soldier doubted they were to open a safe. These days, talk of codes only meant one thing...

The door of the suite slammed shut and Ivanovna darted over to him. "See?! You didn't believe me, but I was right! I told you they were -"

"Shut up," the soldier ordered her, and wished they had given him a radio. It would have sacrificed his untrackability, but at least he could have contacted the officer about this development. As it was... he doubted they were going to make the rendezvous point.

They didn't like it when he had to make plans more complicated which person he was to shoot first. But the soldier reckoned they would rather those codes did not make it to London - at least, not without them knowing about it. He would follow the Germans, as he had done countless times before when an unforeseen circumstance cropped up, intercept them and get the intel out of them before eliminating them, then return back with the information and wait to be put back into cryo. Nothing to worry about.

Except, that was, for the platinum blonde stood in front of him.

"They're nuclear codes," said Mimi, "aren't they? For the British bombs. Sounds rather like a revenge plan, to me. Some people just can't get past the war."

"Not everyone got as good a deal out of it as your father," said the soldier shortly, and hesitated. Where had that come from? What justification did he have for saying that? It didn't help him complete the mission, and it certainly wouldn't make Ivanovna more likely to obey him. It was pointless.

The soldier pressed a hand to his forehead. _Focus,_ he told himself. _Think straight._

"So we follow them?" Ivanovna asked, who didn't seem to have taken the slight against her father personally.

The soldier opened his mouth beneath his mask to say that no, he would follow them and she would stay here, and then remembered his primary objective. Returning with nuclear codes was all very well and good, but if he didn't have Mimi then hell knew what Mr Ivanov would do. Whatever else happened, he had to complete his primary objective. That was the rule, as innate a piece of knowledge to him as how to walk or talk.

"Can you shoot?" he asked her.

"Daddy taught me with his derringer. And I know where to kick, too. Right in the -"

"You do as I say, you don't argue, you don't leave my sight. The moment you disobey I knock you out and stick you in a car boot until I'm done. Confirm?"

Mimi's face lit up. "Oh, yes! I've always wanted to be a spy!"

"I'm not a spy," he said.

"Well, what are you?"

He didn't answer.

 **A/N this is a Civilian File that got out of control, and was born out of my love for cold war spy thrillers (everything from Le Carre to The Man From UNCLE), and procrastinating revision back when I had exams. It's all been written on my phone, in 5-20 minute bursts, and is neither planned nor even forethought about in any way. In essence, this is going to be a great, sprawling mess of a story, going all across Europe. It will be bloody. It will have sex (properly. I won't do what I normally do and conveniently end the paragraph before the down and dirty happens, I promise). It will be poorly written. It will probably never be finished. It is SEEING THE ELEPHANT, AVAILABLE NOW ON AN INTERNET-ACCESSING DEVICE NEAR YOU.**

 **Mimi's surname is from the Crime and Punishment character, and "seeing the elephant" is an old anachronism which means going off and seeing the world and suffering kind of a lot along the way. The more you know.**


	2. Chapter 2

The soldier hotwired a car on the outskirts of Venice, a milky white Lancia, and got Mimi inside before dawn broke. He told her to drive until she reached a garage he had passed on the way in, that he would meet her there, and that if anyone asked she had decided to leave the American/Germans of her own accord. Then he saw her off until the car was out of sight and went to change into civvies.

The soldier hated going undercover. He had to be careful to hide his arm, and his officers had drilled into him that his face was equally noticeable (but why? It wasn't like anyone had ever seen it). He ended up in biker gear that was inconspicuous when paired with a stolen bike, and stuck his combat suit and larger weapons in a rucksack that clung to his back as the motorbike roared out of the city. As the city roads became country ones, he ran over what he knew in his head. Nazis... They had not been in the briefing. What had HYDRA even told him about Nazis?

 _"HYDRA. The Nazis' deep science division."_

The front wheel hit a pothole and the handles of the bike bucked beneath the soldier's hands. His eyes widened and he had to put down a foot to stop himself from going flying off of the road.

He didn't... Nobody had ever told him that. Why would HYDRA tell him that? They were supposed to be Soviet... How the hell did he know that? Why was that sentence, that sliver of information, so familiar to him?

He shook his head and pushed the thought aside. It wasn't important. It didn't matter; what mattered was that his CO got the codes, and whoever was in London did not. The soldier was not told much, but he knew if and when a nuclear strike was going to happen. That would affect even his shadowy operations.

Instead, he thought of Mimi Ivanovna. She hadn't seemed particularly upset by the killing that had happened right in front of her, so she had most likely seen things along those lines before - this, considering her father, was not surprising. But she hadn't been scared of him, either. Perhaps she had read his file, if he even had one - that would explain why she thought she recognised him. And she had thought that he had a name. She had _asked._

The low-slung building of mismatched bricks and corrugated iron rose up on the horizon, heralded by the burnt out shells of a dozen cars. The soldier pulled up outside to see Mimi perched on the bonnet of a Beetle, cigarette held daintily between her fingers, showered and freshly clothed and laughing at a joke the grimy mechanic had just made.

"I'm a fast driver," she explained as he walked up, "no need to scowl, I haven't emasculated you. _And_ this lovely man let me borrow his shower. So you took your muzzle off, hm?" She leant forward, until her little ski-slope nose was an inch from his. "Yes, I do know that face... Have you ever been in flicks?"

Bucky pushed her away from him and turned to the mechanic. "Trade?" he asked, jerking his head back at the stolen bike.

"Got an old Maserati in the back, waiting for someone to take her." The mechanic's voice was barely understandable, so thick was his accent. "I'll need more than just a trade, though."

The soldier turned to Mimi, who raised an eyebrow at him. "Yes?"

"You got cash?"

"What's the magic word?" she asked him, taking another drag of her cigarette. The soldier walked to the white car, reached in through the open window, and took a wad of notes out of the purse sat in the passenger seat.

"This enough?" he asked the mechanic, whose eyes lit up. "Good. We were never here."

"Sir, yes sir!"

"You can't just steal my money!" Mimi protested, matching after him as he walked into the garage. A black, rusty Maserati motorcycle was indeed waiting for him, but its engine still seemed intact. "And I am not getting on that! I'll have to... to straddle you! It's inappropriate!"

The soldier raised an eyebrow.

"Don't look at me like that! Having a... a social life is one thing, but I am certainly not engaging in anything of the kind with the likes of _you_!"

"Pillion or walk," he told her, grabbing a helmet from a hook on the wall and holding it out to her. "Cars are too noticeable."

"So's a man with a bloody metal hand, especially when he's hanging about with someone like me!"

"Fine," the soldier snapped. Something about Mimi tried his usually somewhat level temper. "I'll knock you out and ship you back to your damn father."

"Oh, no you don't, Marlon!"

The soldier hesitated. "What?"

"Marlon," Mimi repeated, her jaw jutted out in defiance. "You know, Marlon Brando? Even if you haven't been in flicks, you look like you have. And you need a name." She sighed, and took the helmet. "This is going to absolutely ruin my hair, you know. Will I be okay in shorts?"

"I don't crash," he said. "Get your stuff."

He dropped his bag in the box mounted on the back of the bike and left it open for Mimi's stuff. He swung his leg over and moment later Mimi got on behind him with barely a grumble. He felt the warmth of her body through the leather of his jacket; she smelled very faintly of expensive rose perfume.

He revved the engine and, with a roar, the bike left the garage in a cloud of sawdust. Mimi gave a shriek as they took of and the pressure of her arms around his torso tripled, but as they got into the open air, the rolling Italian hills, he heard her laugh before the noise was whipped away by the cool early morning wind.

Paris first, the Germans had said, to meet someone called Klein. They would take the fastest route that did not use the autobahns, where they could get pulled over by the Western police, and it was easy for the soldier to figure out what route they would take. So they were probably in a car, since they still had their American cover, and they would stop for the night at about...

There was a small city called Monrais a hundred miles or so past French border that they would probably get to tomorrow evening if they drove without stopping, which they probably would. A small city with small hotels that would not ask questions. The West had little interest in the place, so the Soviets had told him about it; but the Reds also did not care for anywhere west of Berlin, so it was relatively untouched by the two sides of the Cold War - an excellent refuge, then, for these Germans. The soldier could go faster than them on this bike, but Mimi slowed him down. She would insist on resting for at least a few hours, and he could hardly leave her behind.

The westerly foothills of the Alps were covered with small farms, each miles away from the other: he could allow Mimi to sleep in the afternoon, since she had not got any the previous night, and then they could continue to travel under cover of darkness. This way, the owners of the farmhouses would be out in the fields and they would not disturb anyone, if they were careful. It was the last week of summer, the days were long and the harvest was starting to be collected.

The soldier continued onwards until he felt Mimi's arms loosening on his chest from tiredness, about an hour after midday. He braked outside a ramshackle barn with a cottage grafted to one side and his passenger moaned softly.

"I can't feel my thighs," she told him. "Where are we?"

"Lombardy."

Mimi swung one leg over the bike so she was perched sidesaddle and grimaced as she pulled off her delicate shoes. "Ugh. Marlon, look at what you've done to these nylons. I'll never get the mud out of them now," she declared, and hoisted her skirt to fiddle with the clasps of her suspenders. She peeled off the stockings, balled them up and stuck them in the container on the back of the bike. "I'm thirsty."

The cottage might as well have been from a century ago. There was a water pump outside, which Mimi bluntly refused to drink from, and a flagon of warm milk which she sniffed before returning to the cupboard with her mouth twisted downwards in disgust. The red stain had worn away on the inner parts of her lips now, revealing a dusky rose colour. The soldier watched as she reluctantly pumped out some water with manicured fingers and boiled it over the stove.

She did not, he noted, seem to have much problem with breaking and entering. Perhaps she merely thought she was entitled to it all; an odd twist of communist philosophy that meant that, while everything was technically shared, it was all hers anyway. Spoiled little Soviet girls were a fascinating paradox.

Mimi waited for the water to cool impatiently, fiddling with the faded gingham tablecloth as she did. "Why're we stopping?"

"You need sleep," the soldier told her, pulling off his leather jacket. He was not used to the warmth, and the shirt he had stolen stuck uncomfortably to his sweaty skin. Mimi's eyes flicked up and down his torso.

"Please, don't stop on my account," she purred, and the soldier didn't know whether to glare or ignore her. He settled on the latter and gulped down half the lukewarm water. "And don't you need to rest, too?"

Not for another couple of days, at least. He had gone a week in the field without rest before, and there had been no adverse side effects save for a slight headache. "I'll keep watch. The family who lives here'll be back by dusk. Don't use their bed."

"Why not?"

"They'll notice." Beds were the one object the soldier never went near. It was incredibly easy for someone to notice if the place they slept in had been disturbed, and besides, they were part of a world he did not belong to.

"So I just... lie down on the floor? Like some kind of commoner?"

The soldier stared at her. "Your father's one of the most influential communists in the world," he said. "And you talk like a princess."

"Oh, please. Like the Soviet Union's a purely egalitarian society," Mimi scoffed, lifting the tablecloth and draping it around her shoulders. "I'm going to sleep in the barn. The hay might make things more comfortable. Wake me up twenty minutes before we leave, will you?"

The soldier ended up stood in the cool shadows of the barn's entrance, listening to Mimi's soft breathing as she slept. He savoured the lack of her talking and completed an inventory of his weapons, washed the sweat from his shirt and left it to dry in the sun at his feet, repeated everything he knew about the Germans until the information had a familiar shape in his mind, put his shirt back on and found that not yet two hours had passed.

He glanced over at Mimi, who looked younger when she slept. Some of the kohl pencil around the corners of her eyes had smudged, and her hair was escaping its knot; he could count the birthmarks on her pale arms like stars in a city sky. He, HYDRA and the Soviet's greatest weapon, had been sent all the way to Italy to rescue one uppity little girl playing dress-up with the Westerners. Had she been anyone else's daughter, it would have been a complete waste of time. But Ivanov was a name that carried serious weight. What a disappointment this little renegade must be to him.

He shook his head slightly and looked back out at the landscape, the undulating greenery giving way to distant Alps that wore snow like veils. He let his mind turn away from Mimi and forwards - to Monrais, to be precise. It was so peaceful there, so neutral, that they called it Second Switzerland. The perfect place to kill someone and not raise an alarm. And then, once that loose end was tied up and he knew the codes, he could return Mimi to the rendezvous point in Berlin and finally finish this damn mission.

There was a jerry can of fuel in the machinery corner of the barn. The soldier filled the bike's tank and returned his weapons to the box. As he did, his fingers knocked Mimi's bag to one side and its contents spilled out - a kaleidoscope of clothes, practically wrapped around perfume and cosmetic bottles to stop them shattering. This was a woman who was used to travelling, who could pack a little and make it seem like a lot. And, at the bottom, was a little revolver with four bullets inside.

Where had the other bullet ended up, he wondered?

An hour before dusk he shook Mimi awake. She whimpered and flung an arm dramatically over her eyes before sitting up, her white-blonde hair filled with straw. "Already?" she mumbled, and stifled a yawn with the back of her delicate hand.

He left her to wake up properly and took the tablecloth back to the cottage, from which he removed any trace that they had ever been there. The hard-baked clay of the earth meant that the bike's tyres would not leave tracks, which was one small mercy of the heat. The downside was that his arm, which never usually saw daylight, was baking hot enough to burn whenever it touched his skin. He left his leather jacket off so that his arm could cool as the night came in and went to find Mimi, who had managed to remove the hay from her hair and had fixed her make-up back to relative perfection again. "It's gonna get cold," he told her, holding out the jacket.

"Thank you, Marlon." The thing dwarfed the elfin young woman completely, her hands vanishing beneath the cuffs. "What about you?"

"I'm used to cold."

"Ugh. That's one thing I certainly don't miss about Russia. It's lovely and sunny in the west for most of the year - no wonder they have so much more fun. You know, I do believe I caught the sun while I was sleeping in that barn. My forearms are quite brown. This is awful. How does my nose look? Is it red?"

If it had been, he would not have been able to tell because of the powder she was wearing. "Get on the bike," he said, and she heaved a sigh as she climbed on behind him. "They'll be at Monrais. We can get there before sunrise tomorrow if we don't stop."

"I'm hungry."

The soldier responded by kicking up the stand on the bike and tearing out of the farm. He was not hungry. He could not even remember the last time he had eaten.


	3. Chapter 3

Monrais was a city so small it was practically a town, the place where East and West left their alliances at the border. It was in south-west France and was, in its sleepy way, slowly catching up to the rest of the world with its newly risen telephone lines and cars dotting the streets.

"You think they're here?" Mimi asked him, at about three in the morning when they had rode into town.

"Makes sense."

"What if you're wrong?"

"I won't be. Go into that shop, ask about your friends."

"What friends?" said Mimi blankly.

"The Germans."

"Oh, _those_ friends. Alright, but why can't you?"

Because people were more likely to talk to a pretty girl than someone like him, and because he was itching to get back into combat gear, and because talking to civilians was always someone else's job. "Don't ask questions."

"I thought you wanted me to ask questions?" Mimi said with a smug little smile. He didn't bother to reply. "Fine, fine. I'm going. Wait here for me."

Five minutes later she returned, looking very pleased with herself and tucking something into the pocket of her shorts. "Marlon?" she said, hovering by the bike. "Where have you gone?"

He shifted slightly so his arm caught the glare of the street lamp and Mimi jumped as she noticed him. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "You've gone all scary again. Muzzle and everything."

"Mask," he corrected her. "Where are they?"

"Hôtel du Soleil," she told him. "Apparently they were awfully rude on the way in. Come on, Mr Moreau gave me directions."

It was fascinating, how effortlessly Mimi seemed to get on with people - the soldier remembered the mechanic back in Italy, who had been utterly charmed by her. She appeared to have no respect for anybody, no diffidence, but because of it she had even managed to not be scared of _him_. To Mimi Ivanovna, the world and its inhabitants was ripe and waiting to be taken in her nail-polished fingertips. She didn't so much belong to it as it belonged to her. Meanwhile, the soldier's purpose was to not even be a part of that world until somebody needed him. It was odd.

"That's the place," Mimi told him, nodding at a shabby three-storey building with exposed beams. A dilapidated sign swung over the door, depicting a smiling yellow sun that creaked in the soft, cool breeze. "Only one light's on that's not on the ground floor. How do we get in?"

"You don't," said the soldier, "stay here."

"Not bloody likely!" Her heels clicked on the pavement as she marched after him, following him around the back of the building. He spun around and pinned her down with a glare.

"You're an unknown variable," he barked at her. "Stay."

"I am not your pet! And you never know, I might be useful! Somehow!"

If there was one thing that got under the soldier's skin, it was people not obeying orders. He had licence to shoot anyone who disobeyed in the field, but that would go against his primary objective here; threatening would have to do. "You wait round the side until I come out or I -"

"Knock me out," Mimi finished, "I get it. Fine. Have it your way, Marlon." She marched off, little fists clenched, and the soldier fumed silently for a moment before turning round and squaring up to the wall. The blackened elm beams made it almost unbelievably easy to climb but he took it slowly anyway, ensuring he was not seen or heard. The only lit window was open, its netting twisting like blizzards in the wind, and he could see two silhouettes through it, a male and a female. A smoke bomb through the window would knock them out, then he would just tie them up and extract the information when they -

"Johnny! Johnny, let me in! Please!"

The more slender of the two figures turned away from her companion. "Is that...?"

Mimi. With a sinking heart, the soldier realised that Mimi was on the other side of the door.

"That red whore! What do we do?" Heidi hissed.

There was a click and a third figure practically fell into the room in a mess of sobbing. "Oh, Johnny!" Mimi wailed, clutching onto Ernst's shirt front like a raft in the middle of the Atlantic, "someone killed Harry! He was positively terrifying! You're a CIA man, aren't you? Oh - oh, can't you do something!"

"Mimi darling, slow down. Harry - Harry's dead?"

"Yes! It was awful! His eyes, Johnny! And he - oh, Johnny, he was a monster! He had a metal arm, and he just choked the life out of him!"

Wait. _Wait._ What the hell was she doing? The soldier pulled his semi-automatic from its holster and got ready to intervene.

"I just ran, I didn't know what to do, I just -"

"Mimi, Mimi, it's okay. Hush, that's it. Good girl. Let me pour you a drink."

There was a large, nasally sniff. "No," said Mimi, "let me. You'll both need one too. Hullo, Maria. Sorry for bursting in on you like this. How I've missed you both!" There was the gurgling and clinking of something being decanted into crystal glasses. "Here. Johnny, you simply must do something!"

"I will, Mimi my love. Just tell me what you know."

There were a couple more sniffs before Mimi spoke again. "We were in this charming little chateau down in the Alps, watching that new Marlon Brando film -"

The soldier's finger relaxed on the trigger. Marlon... That had to be a signal. He decided to give her two minutes, and in his head began to count down from one hundred and twenty.

"And it was so lovely, but then this, this absolute just bursts through the window, and Johnny yells something in another language, German I think, and they start shooting each other! And now he's _dead_!" she lamented.

"Oh, Mimi," Ernst began, "that's -"

"How did you know?" Heidi interrupted, voice laced with a bad Italian accent. "How did you know where to find us?"

There was a heavy pause.

"Oh," said Mimi, "shit. I hadn't thought of that. Still, it doesn't matter now. You can come in, Marlon." There was the sound of glass shattering. "They aren't going anywhere."

The soldier vaulted through the window with his gun outstretched. The glass had been Ernst's tumbler, now shattered on the floor while its former holder staggered around the room. Heidi, meanwhile, lunged ungainly for Mimi, who sidestepped neatly and avoided the woman as she fell face first onto the floor.

"Sleeping pills," Mimi explained, pulling the empty packet out of her shorts and wiggling it in her fingers. "Mr Moreau gave them to me free when I said I was having trouble getting my head down. It's amazing what a smile and a wink can do, isn't it?"

Ernst tried to say something and collapsed. The soldier stared at Mimi.

"I thought this would be easier," she said, "and I told you I can be useful, didn't I?"

"You..." the soldier began. He didn't have much experience of young women, but he was fairly certain they didn't pull things like this out of thin air.

"Look - Daddy always told me if you want something to happen, you have to make a show." She took a little curtsey. "What do I do now?"

She stood there, not a hair out of place, having just knocked out two Nazi agents like it was nothing. The soldier realised that he had, perhaps, been underestimating her. "Find something I can tie them up with," he said, dragging the desk- and armchair into the middle of the room.

Mimi yanked the cord out of the lamp and unwound the scarf she had tied around her head. "Here," she said, "use the fabric on the girl, will you? It'll hurt less."

"It won't," the soldier replied, lifting Heidi's prone body into the chair and severing the lamo cord with his knife. "The rubber won't bite into his skin."

"Let me. You do him," Mimi said, her fingers brushing against his as she finished off the knot that bound Heidi's right hand to the arm of the chair. The soldier opened his mouth to tell her to triple-knot it, but it was already done. "I never imagined that the Nazis would use a couple as their spies, did you?" she asked him, moving onto the other hand. "Maybe they met on the job."

The soldier glanced at her as he ripped her scarf in half and bound Ernst. He wondered why he cared.

Mimi unlaced Ernst's shoes and tied Heidi's ankles together with one of them. "Odd stuff, feelings."

"Wouldn't know," the soldier said, hoping that would end the uncomfortable conversation.

Mimi pursed her lips. "Really? Never been in love? Never even had sex?" When he didn't answer, she laughed. "Well, I'm happy to show you at any time, Marlon."

" _What_?"

"Not with you, obviously. I mean - look at you. But feel free to watch the next time I'm in a bar and some charming gentlemen buys me a drink," she said with a photogenic smile.

And there was the Mimi Ivanovna he was used to. The soldier shook his head and smacked Ernst round the face. "Wake up."

"Wh..." Ernst's head lolled around on his shoulders. His eyes opened, and then popped out of his head. "Shit!" he exclaimed. " _You_!"

The soldier felt a grim satisfaction at being recognised. Beside him, Mimi splashed water on Heidi's face, who awoke with a splutter.

"Tell us the codes or I'll shoot you in the head!" she cried, pointing her little derringer between Heidi's arms. The two Germans exchanged glances, and began to laugh.

The soldier took Mimi's arm and pulled her aside. "Just... don't," he said.

"But I -"

"You helped. Leave the rest to me." He hesitated. "Wait out in the hallway."

"I've seen some awful things, you know, I don't mind watching you -"

"Don't argue," he said. And for once, she did not. "Give the hotel manager some of those pills. I don't want him hearing."

When the door had closed behind her, the soldier turned to the Germans. All humour had gone from their faces now. He advanced on Heidi, knife spinning in a silver-black blur between his fingers.

"I won't tell you anything," Heidi said, bottom lip wobbling. Beside her, Ernst struggled in his restraints. The soldier stayed silent. "You can't make me - you can't - OH MY GOD! STAY AWAY FROM ME! STAY AWAY!"

He had never liked it when they screamed. She stopped pretty soon, though. They all did.


	4. Chapter 4

The results of the soldier's interrogation meant that Ernst Himmel could no longer see. This suited the soldier just fine, as it meant he had to imagine the things that were now making his lover wail in pain.

But he doubted the man would talk. Whatever training he had had with the Nazis, it was good. There were three types of people in an interrogative situation - those who talked, those who died, and those who broke. The latter unsettled the soldier; their eyes went glassy after a while, they stopped responding to even the most horrific of pains, and they did not resist. They were taken away from him, these empty shells, and he had no idea what happened to them after their interrogations. He did not ask.

But Ernst had not broken. He was crying, sure, he had shit himself twice over, but he had not broken. The bloody mess that was his face still had some defiance in its expression.

Heidi was his only chance of getting those codes.

The soldier killed Ernst, quickly and cleanly, and Heidi howled.

"Why?" she wailed. "Why, God damn it? Why did it have to be us?! I was a code-breaker! I never wanted this!"

The soldier never asked questions, since they tended to make people clam up and figure out what his agenda was. But he was getting impatient. "Who do you work for?"

"The White Storm," she whimpered, "Nazi resurgence. They wear masks. Oh, fuck. You killed him. You bastard, you killed him!"

"Tell me the codes."

"What, a red drone like you?!" Heidi laughed, a little maniacally. "You have got to be shitting me! The fucking Winter Soldier... I never asked for this. I'm not telling the man who killed Ernst anything!"

The soldier considered this. "What about the woman he was sleeping with?"

Heidi stopped. Stopped crying, trembling, even her blood seemed to run a little slower. "What did you just say?" she whispered.

The soldier wiped his knife clean and sheathed it before turning and walking to the door.

Out in the corridor, Mimi had procured a pack of cards and was playing solitaire. "Hullo," she said, looking up. "Are you done yet?"

"Ernst," he said, "Johnny."

"What about him? Is he dead?"

"Yes, but - the way he looked at you when you went in," said the soldier, and struggled to put it into words. "He... did he..."

"We had sex, if that's what you mean," Mimi said, collecting the cards together and returning them to the pack. "I don't think Maria - Heidi - knew. He told me not to tell the others."

So his hunch had been right, then. "She didn't. Not until now. I think you might be my way into her head."

"Happy to help," Mimi said, holding out her hand for him to pull her up. "It seems that having open legs has endless advantages."

The soldier only realised that he had laughed a second or two after it had happened. Mimi gave him a dazzling smile in return, clearly having heard him even if his mask had hidden his face, and walked into the hotel room.

Heidi had not moved, but she stared at Mimi with such burning, frenzied hatred that it surprised even the soldier. "You expect me to believe that _you_ -" she began, and Mimi held up a finger for silence. Completely ignoring the body of Ernst, she pulled a footstool in front of Heidi and sat in front of her, resting her chin on her delicate fingers with a contemplative expression.

"The thing is, Maria darling," she began, "that men all think with their dicks. Haven't you realised that by now? All these wars, it's a powerful man's way of saying 'look at how much bigger mine is than yours'. That's all it ever boiled down to." She pulled a pack of Black Russians out of her pocket and lit one. "Your man's was certainly above average."

Heidi screamed, and thrashed about in her chair. Mimi didn't seem even the slightest bit scared. "You shouldn't hate him. It was only to be expected, that his eyes wandered. It wasn't your fault, either. I want you to know," she said, leaning forward and patting Heidi's knee, "you really are a victim."

The soldier watched, and decided that this definitely came under the category of cruel and unusual punishment. He also wondered if HYDRA thought with their dicks.

"We'll let you go," Mimi said, "let you walk free. Start again, right here in Monrais. Forget him. Forget us. Just tell my friend here the codes and it'll all be over."

Heidi spat at Mimi, who took out a patterned silk handkerchief and wiped her cheek with a slightly distasteful expression. "Do you have any idea," the German snarled, "how much of a fucking burden these codes are? They aren't written down, they exist only in our - in _my_ memory. Tonight we meet the rest of the White Storm in Paris, we socialise, we're escorted to London where the nuke is waiting. I am not a person, I'm a detonator. How can I walk free with something like that in my head? With a trigger in my brain that I can never forget?"

The back of the soldier's neck prickled. He wanted Heidi to shut up, right now, for reasons he did not entirely understand. But he could tell Mimi was close.

"How can I walk free without _him_?"

"Then don't," Mimi said. "We can kill you, if you want. Do you want the blood from a nuclear strike on your hands? Just... Hand off the baton, Maria. Heidi. Tell me the codes. I won't tell the soldier, I swear."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You think that's so easy. You have no idea what it's like, you little brat! How hard it is to sleep at night when you have the power to kill millions!"

"I could cope," Mimi said shortly.

"No. You couldn't. It will destroy." Heidi closed her eyes and laughed, a spluttering laugh choked with blood. "So yes, I will tell you. So you can suffer as I have. Lean closer, little girl. I'll whisper it in your ear, and then you put a bullet from that little derringer in my head. And you do not tell your assassin boyfriend. You bear this alone. Swear. Swear on something important."

"I swear on Josef Sta - no," said Mimi, "I swear on my poor mother." She leant forward, so that Heidi's split and bloody lips were buried in her hair. She whispered something too quietly for the soldier to hear and Mimi leaned back, now removing her gun from her pocket.

The soldier stepped forward to take over, but she rested a hand on his chest to stop him. "No," she said, "I swore. You have to let me do this."

The soldier stepped back. "Don't miss."

"I won't." The little gun looked too big in Mimi's hands as she clicked back the safety and pointed it at Heidi's forehead.

The woman laughed. "Silly little red whore," she breathed, "playing with her father's toys. Careful with him, little whore. He's not got a heart."

 _Bang._

The soldier reached out and took the derringer off of Mimi. "We won't make it to Berlin before tonight," he said. "They'll know something's gone wrong before we're out of the picture. We need to get to Paris."

Mimi nodded, her jaw clenched.

"They've never seen these two," the soldier continued, "I know where they're meeting. They're expecting a man and a woman, we can..."

"I get it," Mimi said shortly. She was staring at the hole in Heidi's head.

"You remember the codes?"

"Of course I remember the fucking codes."

"Look at me, Ivanovna."

"In a moment," she replied dully.

He wanted to do something, anything that would snap her back into her usual self. "Wait by the car outside with the Italian plates," he said. "I'll clean up here."

"Give me my gun."

"No."

Something sparked in her eyes. "Why the hell not?"

"Because I don't trust you with it," he said bluntly. "Wait by the car."

"Not without my gun," Mimi stated, her voice edging closer to a tremble. He could see that she was close to breaking down, and mutely handed over the derringer. "Thank you."

%

Mimi had two black streaks of mascara down her cheeks. The soldier didn't mention it.

Southern France looked very much like northern Italy, in that it was nothing at all like Russia. Once again they stuck to country roads and quiet highways, the soldier driving with Mimi in the passenger seat, curled up like a cat with her forehead pressed against the window. He had thought she was asleep, but shortly before noon he was startled by her hoarse voice.

"The thing about Nazis," she said, "is they're so awful that they're the only thing both sides of the Iron Curtain can agree on. What d'you know about them?"

He wasn't sure. He knew exactly as much as he needed to know; superfluous history was not something he had ever thought about.

Mimi gave up waiting for an answer. "They liked scapegoats," she said quietly, "and forgot that other people had souls too." She leant back from the window and rolled over so she was facing him. With her streaky make-up almost gone he could see that her nose had in fact burnt along the bridge, a little strip of peeling red across the otherwise perfect skin. "We act like capitalism is evil, and they say the same about us. But it's not the ideas that are evil, not at all. It's the people who believe in them too much."

He moved his gaze from the road to her, to her messy face and her reddened eyes. "Three bullets," he said.

"Pardon?"

"There's three bullets left in your derringer. One's in Monrais. Where's the other?"

She blinked. "Barcelona," she said. "A not very nice man tried to take advantage of me. I was having none of that."

"Doesn't sound like you."

"Even I am allowed to say no, Marlon. Don't you know that? My offer of showing you how it all works still stands."

The soldier almost smiled. His mask was in the glove compartment of the car, and Mimi could would have seen his face soften. "Pass."

"Well, we're about to enter the city of love, so don't be so certain. Which reminds me - Marlon, we both look a state. You said they were meeting at a fancy townhouse, yes? They won't let us in looking like that."

"I can wear a glove."

"Sweetheart, that's not what I meant. I'll need to do some shopping for the both of us if we want to get past the front door. Heidi mentioned masks…"

"Can you speak German?"

"Flawlessly," said Mimi. "And you're sure they won't realise we're impostors?"

"It'll work," he said firmly. What he had got out of Ernst before his death had made the soldier certain of it. He disliked identity theft even more than he did dressing as a civilian, but something told him Mimi would be handy to have at his side.

"I feel... odd," Mimi said after a few minutes of silence. "Dull. A proper person should feel more than dull, shouldn't they?"

"Wouldn't know."

Mimi picked at a loose thread on her shirt. "My father likes to put on a show," she said. "He likes how powerful it makes men feel. He's killed men at the dinner table. We've had to start using a red cloth instead of white. He said it was good I saw it, that I learned not to be scared. He said a person who does not feel fear is invincible."

"He's wrong," said the soldier.

"I'd like to see you argue with him." She sighed, drawing her knees up under her chin. "How long until we reach Paris?"

"Three hours."

"Can you give me two to buy what we need to look appropriate? I'll flag down the first taxi we see and I'll meet you where I leave you."

"Do I have another option?" the soldier asked.

"No."

"Then fine. Don't make a scene."

She leaned across the central panel and planted a kiss on his cheek. Her lips were warmer than the sun coming through the windows and remarkably soft, and the ghost of her contact lingered even after she had moved away.

"Don't do that," he said, and Mimi winked.

"I'm sure you'll get me back to Moscow eventually, Marlon. Just grit your teeth and bear it until then."


	5. Chapter 5

"Let me cut your hair."

"No."

"Then you could at least shave," Mimi called through the bathroom door. "I bought you that razor especially."

The soldier stared at the mirror above the sink in their hotel room. No matter how many times he looked at it, his face was always unfamiliar to him; the wide jaw, the thin lips, the narrow eyes. He opened the straight razor Mimi had given him along with a paper bag containing an expensive suit and shaved, slowing down whenever the blade got too close to his carotid artery. He had showered as well, at his companion's insistence. _That_ had been a jarring experience.

He set down the razor and probed at the faint scars latticing his chest, wondering how he had got them. It was odd - two days ago he would never have even begun to think along those lines, ask those questions. It was like the farther away from HYDRA he was, the more he began to think.

So now he had some idea of what the Nazis were. Was HYDRA anything like that? Did it matter if they were? It was worrying, how little he knew. It made him feel small.

Mimi rapped on the door. "Whenever you're ready!" she yelled.

He dressed swiftly, fumbling a while with the cufflinks, and left the bathroom with his tie undone around his neck. Mimi, who was dressed in black and pearls, gave him an appraising look. "Don't look so miserable," she ordered him. "It was either this or I had you naked but for an owl mask. Come here," she added, reaching for his neck - the soldier stiffened, then remembered she was going for the tie. Still, someone handling a length of cord right where he could be strangled did not fill him with confidence.

"You look nice with your hair slicked back like that," Mimi observed, handing him a single black leather glove. "If anyone asks, you -"

"Got shot in the hand," he finished for her, pulling it on over his silvery fingers. "I know."

"How many times have you imposted before, Marlon?"

"No idea," he said, and Mimi's eyes widened. "I don't remember."

"Whyever not?"

"They wipe me," he said, and Mimi gave him a blank look. "After every mission, they clean my head out. Makes it safer."

"That's... horrible."

He shrugged. "Mask."

Mimi blinked a few times, heavy eyelashes fluttering across overly bright eyes, and turned away. "Yes," she said, "of course." He watched as she crossed to one of the many bags thrown on the bed, and pulled out two boxes. She handed the larger one to him and he opened it to reveal a black mask, skull-shaped, that would cover his upper face. He nodded and tucked it into the inside pocket of his suit, along with his combat mask, and saw Mimi pluck a matching white skull from the other one.

"We need to go," he said. "The address is two streets from here, we can walk. Don't -"

"Eat or drink anything, don't seek people out, and don't make my own plans. Yes, Marlon, I listened."

The house was three storeys high, balconied, and the colour of ivory. A few sleek black cars were parked outside, and from behind his new sunglasses the soldier watched as a man in dark clothes was shown in through the door by an impassive security guard.

"Last chance to tell me the code," he said to Mimi under his breath.

"I swore. And you remember the safe word Ernst told you to get in?"

"Obviously. Masks on."

The bone colour of Mimi's mask made the tan that her face had gained over the last couple of days glow. The eyeholes of the soldier's own made it difficult for him to see peripherally, but what he lost in visual he gained in anonymity. They walked up to the door and Mimi looped her arm through the crook of his elbow. "Amendment of the first," he told the guard, who nodded and opened the door.

"German really is a very pretty language when spoken properly. Far nicer than Russian, anyway - excuse _me_!"

Two more guards had stepped forward in the black-and-white tiled lobby with their arms outstretched, ready to frisk the newcomers. They took the soldier's two guns and knife, left one more switchblade unnoticed, and Mimi batted the hands of her own guard away with an outraged expression.

"How _dare_ you?" she snapped. "Look at me, sir! Look at how tight this gown is! Can you see anywhere I could hide a gun on me?"

"No, ma'am, but -"

"But nothing! Keep your dirty little paws off of me!"

There was such a commanding authority to Mimi's voice that the guard backed off at once. She gave him a disgusted look, took Bucky's hand and swept past him into the reception room.

"I still have my derringer," she whispered. Her hand was vice-tight on his forearm. "Should we need it."

The soldier felt a flicker of… something in his chest. He removed his hand from his trouser pocket and rested it on the small of Mimi's back, callused fingers catching on the silk of her dress, and watched as the hairs rose on the back of her neck. "Keep it close," he said, "don't leave my sight."

"I wasn't planning on it," she replied in an undertone, and they crossed the reception room into the hall beyond.

It was the centre of the townhouse, the room, and it rose from the ground floor to the roof, with a vaulted ceiling and two layers of polished balconies running around it. It was a terraced house, meaning that it should have been boxed in on either side, but its height meant that the highest floor had windows all the way around it, as well as stained glass filtering the light at the back wall on every level. In the centre was a long, ornately decorated dining table, which nobody was yet sat at, and instead twenty or so people in masks were milling around in groups of four or five, socialising over champagne. The soldier felt on edge, and not just because it was a world away from Soviet Siberia. He was comfortable in any scenario, as long as he was in the shadows, but here he was on display. Hopefully, Mimi wouldn't draw too much attention to themselves –

" _Dar-_ ling!" In a whirl of black silk, Mimi swept across the room and embraced the only other woman present. "How lovely to finally meet you! Oh, I have heard so much about you. Don't worry about my man, he's a funny old thing – tell me how you've been."

They were dead. Or… or were they?

Uncertainty flickered for half of a moment in the White Storm woman's eyes, but it vanished so fast it was barely even noticeable. "Oh," she said, "I've had the most _awful_ month, my dear. What did you say your name was?"

"Heidi."

"Ah, of course. Well, Emil and I have had to move twice in five weeks. We've had Yanks on our tail, you see. Emil says they're CIA, but I think they're SHIELD, because the agency isn't nearly so good as they are. We had to go in disguise just to get here!"

"How positively _dreadful!_ " Mimi exclaimed, and plucked two champagne flutes from an orbiting waiter. "Do you know what time the meeting starts?"

"As soon as we sit down to dinner. Here, let me introduce you both. Emil, this is Heidi and her young gentlemen friend – you're one of the believers, aren't you?" the woman said, and the soldier blinked as he realised he was being directly addressed. It was somewhat less pleasant than staring down the barrel of a gun at the wrong end, and the woman had lipstick on her teeth.

Mimi's fingernails digging into his forearm spurred him into action, and the soldier nodded. "I picked him up in Venice," Mimi explained, "his father was one of Mussolini's men. Doesn't speak much German, poor thing, but I like them a little befuddled."

"Of course. Well, this is my husband, Emil."

He was tall, thin, and dreadfully pale, clad all in a white suit and a black crow mask with an elongated beak. The eyeholes were covered with smoked glass, but the soldier could feel the burning gaze behind them. That beak stayed pointed at him for just a fraction of a second too long for the soldier to be entirely comfortable.

 _Klein,_ the soldier thought. It had to be Klein.

"Have we met before?" said Emil. "There's something about your jawline."

Mimi interceded before the soldier could react. "I always say he looks like he's been in flicks," she said with a soft laugh, "I call him Marlon. Isn't it _funny?"_

The question hung in the air like gas. "Yes," said Emil, and the soldier relinquished his hidden grip on his switchblade. "That must be it. Come, children. Sit. Make merry, for we are in the eye of the storm and must savour its placidness." Emil turned, offered a hand to his wife, and led her to a seat next to him at the head of the table.

Once they were out of earshot, Mimi exhaled. "I didn't like that," she said softly, "I didn't like that at all."

"Someone would be dead if you hadn't talked," the soldier told her. "Stay focused."

"Was that… praise?" she asked, as a waiter indicated two chairs for them to sit at. "I should mark the date." She sniffed. "Marlon, why _do_ you look so familiar?"

The soldier was about to tell her this was neither the time nor the place, but at the head of the table Emil had tapped one long, yellowed fingernail to his flute and the ringing of the glass had caused silence to fall upon the crowd.

"Friends," he said, "allies. Believers. We are at the precipice of a third act, a third… war. Not this pretence at war, this dance of cowards, but true animus against those who thought they had subdued us. The Reds, the liberals, they will taste the fury that the Reich once channelled in lead and shrapnel, they will taste it now in nuclear devastation. We are close. We will obliterate their divided Europe and take nest in the ashes. Rain will fall, and nourish the scorched earth. We will renew this wasteland. We will bring purity once again. We are the White Storm, and our wrath will be felt."

A large, fat man in a wolf mask began to clap, slowly, meaty hands flapping together. Then a woman's gentle tittering joined in and, all around them, the diners were suddenly in applause. Mimi and the soldier sat there in silence, stunned by the words that had been spoken. He had thought that they were merely going to hold the new powers to ransom and demand the country of Germany back, but no. This was total obliteration that they were planning.

And Mimi had the key to it in her head.

They had to stop this. Moscow was close enough to the rest of Europe that it could easily be taken out by one of the nukes, and without Moscow, the head of HYDRA that existed beneath the KGB would be gone. The soldier's COs would not be very happy about that; his programme needed a lot of funding from them.

The sound of shattering glass roused the soldier from his thoughts, and he turned to see Mimi apologising profusely as champagne seeped into the tablecloth. Her fingers were shaking as she dabbed at it with a napkin – the soldier grabbed her hand and dragged it beneath the table, where nobody would notice the trembling, and waiters swarmed forwards to clean up the mess.

He could see that her breathing was erratic; her chest was rising and falling beneath the black silk, and her skin was flushing pink. Fortunately, food had arrived, so nobody was paying attention to her, but if she carried on like this then they would swiftly be discovered. She was supposed to be a devoted servant to the White Storm, happy to carry such a powerful key in her memory, but now she looked as though she was about to be sick.

"We have to go," she whispered, and for the first time the soldier could see terror in her eyes. He opened his mouth to talk her out of a complete breakdown – and snapped his attention away from her as a shadow passed over him, temporarily blocking out the early evening sunlight.

 _Outside._ He looked up to the highest balcony, where most of the sunlight was coming from, and saw something move beyond one of the windows. He checked the other floors – yes, the shadows had changed. They were surrounded. But by who?

American agents, like Emil's wife had said. "Stay here," the soldier told Mimi, and left the table before anyone could stop him. He propelled the doorman out of the way, headed down into the basement kitchen, strode through it and pulled open the door of the fire escape, pressing himself against the wall and closing it behind him. He removed his combat mask from his pocket, pulled a section of the edge from it, twisted part of it around until it clicked and held it to his ear. After a short burst of static, he heard voices over radios. Yes, that was a Yank accent if ever he had heard one…

"Fucking Nazis. I fucking hate Nazis. I joined SHIELD because I thought we would be frying bigger fucking fish than fascist dickweeds."

"Language, Dawson."

"Sorry, sir."

The soldier reached a hand back into the bustling kitchen, grabbed a silver platter, and held it out in front of him to use as a mirror. The side of the building was crawling with black-clad agents as though it were infested with spiders: on the ground, perched on windowsills, dangling on wires from the roof. The ones nearest the windows were holding launchers of some kind. Attached to them were canisters filled with some kind of liquid.

"Take aim, boys," said the voice on the radio, "let's gas these sons of bitches to hell."

Oh, fuck. Mimi was still in there.

The soldier turned on his heel and sprinted through the kitchen as, above him, he heard the glass of countless windows shatter. He leapt up the stairs and barrelled through the doors of the dining hall, pulling his mask out of his pocket and ripping the skull one away from his face. He inhaled just before the yellowish cloud of smoke hit him, felt the gas sting his eyes, and stumbled forward to the table. People were already dying. The tablecloth was stained with blood and vomit, and those who still could were stumbling around, grabbing each other, trying to run. Without even needing to think, the soldier went to the figure in the black dress and held the combat mask, with its gas filtration technology, to Mimi's face.

He scooped her up and ran just as the SHIELD agents swarmed into the hall and headed up, away from the entrances, away from the gas. Mimi's muscles were spasming but she was still conscious, still coughing and gagging and trying to get the shit out of her system. He kicked down doors until he found a bathroom, turned on the taps and held her face under it, rinsing her eyes clean of the stuff.

"One's still alive!" he heard someone yell. "Up here! First floor bathroom!"

The soldier pulled out his switchblade and prepared to fight. The agent ran in, took aim – and dropped his gun as his jaw fell open.

"Holy shit," he said, "it's you."

What? The soldier's metal arm was covered – how could he be recognised?

"You're dead," said the agent, "you died. You fell off a mountain."

Part of the soldier's brain screamed at him to kill him, just to shut him up, but he was paralysed.

"James Barnes is dead," the agent gabbled, "Jesus. Jesus Christ. No. It can't. It can't be you."

James Barnes. The soldier knew that name. Why did he know that name? And why could he feel pain in an arm that had never been more than metal?

The agent lifted his gun again, trained it at the soldier's heart. "James Barnes is a fucking Nazi," he breathed, "oh, God. I'm so fucking sorry. We have to clean the entire place out."

The soldier realised he was going to die. And he wasn't even going to stop it, because all he could think about was that name. _James Barnes._

 _Sergeant James Barnes, 32557038. Reporting for duty, sir._

Why did that fucking name hurt so much?

 _Bang._

The agent looked down at the bright red rose that was blossoming in the centre of his chest, then still further down at the dribble of piss leaking out of the bottom of his trouser leg. "Well," he said vaguely, "that's shit." Then he died, falling forward with his head landing at the soldier's feet.

"You, Marlon," said Mimi weakly, lowering the derringer, "have an awful lot of explaining to do." She turned to the open doorway as the sound of footfall thundered up the stairs. "But first… sort that out, will you? I need to be sick."


	6. Chapter 6

They stared at the bodies of the SHIELD agents. The soldier couldn't think straight, not even having slaughtered all these people. He couldn't… God, his head hurt…

"Who's James Barnes?" he asked Mimi, who was already standing unsupported. A small, fully-functioning part of his brain wondered how hard the woman was to kill.

"He was an American," she told him, "during the war, there was this… this propaganda unit. They were called the Howling Commandos, they were led by a man they called Captain America." She laughed under her breath. "Fucking Americans. You were the sergeant."

"No," said the soldier. "I'm not… I'm not that."

"Not what? Everyone comes from somewhere, Marlon. They didn't just make you in a lab. You were born, you lived, you died… and somehow, they brought you back." She started to walk away, leaning against the wall for support, down to the dining hall. The soldier followed her, working on autopilot. _Sergeant James Barnes._ "It explained why I recognised you. I thought you were from the flicks, but really it was the news reels. I was taught to hate you."

He had been alive. He had had a name. He had lived, and loved, and felt. And now he was… this.

The gas had dissipated entirely from the dining hall; all that was left was the corpses. Mimi walked over to the table, stepping delicately over sprawled bodies with her skirt lifted above her ankles, and picked up a file that was lying to the right hand side of where Emil had been sat.

"It has the coordinates for the location of the nukes," she said as she read. "Including the console that needs the key to be put in to activate them. But there were two files here before. The Americans – some of them must have got away. Marlon, this could end the cold war and start world war three – if they figure out where the key is, then…" she dropped the file back on the table. "Shit. I'm the next nuclear arms race. Are you even _listening_ to me?"

The soldier hadn't moved. He was staring at the bodies of Emil and his wife, who had found each other before their muscles had become paralysed by the toxin and were now lying on the mahogany floor, rictus-laden fingers permanently entwined together. Their masks had fallen off in the chaos – the woman was old, her face lined, and the man gaunt. Their open eyes were staring at each other.

Mimi walked over to him. "What is it?" she asked.

He tore his gaze away from the couple. "Teach me," he said hoarsely. "Teach me how to feel."

She paused for a moment, then a soft smile broke out across her face. Silently, she took his hand and led him up to the bedroom.

 **A/N what a short chapter, you may be thinking. What a bitch the author is, you may be musing, for making us wait until next chapter for the smut. Well fear not, my good people. For this is a double update! Just click right on through into the sexytimes and enjoy yourself, while I sit here and eat cornflakes directly out of the box at half six in the evening because I've ran out of all other food. What a life, eh? What a sexy, sexy life.**


	7. Chapter 7

The soldier didn't realise it was possible to feel like this.

When Mimi had, slowly and carefully, undressed him, he had watched her eyes – how they had roved across him, flicking from scar to scar then back to his face, which she had kissed, with lips that tasted ever so faintly of VX toxin. That first kiss was gentle, the second just strong enough to force his lips apart; he sat on the edge of the bed and she straddled him, warm in his lap, every brush of her skin sending electric jolts through her body.

"You can touch me, you know," she told him, with the same soft smile. "You don't have to wait for orders."

His hands had moved beneath the silk of her dress, up her thighs, and fumbled with the clasps of her suspenders. At that point Mimi had tutted, reached around herself and pulled the entire silk gown from her body, casting it aside, and had kissed him for the third time as he moved his hands on instinct – not learned instinct, not muscle memory, but impulses carnal and previously unfelt. Her kisses grew stronger, edged along his jaw and down his neck, and the soldier felt something stir in him. He took her by the waist, turned, and lay her down on the bed so that he could see her: she laughed and pulled him on top of her.

Her skin was still milk-white where clothes had stopped the sun from touching it. As he dragged his teeth along her breast, kissing his way downwards, she sighed almost inaudibly and he realised that this was a symbiotic thing. What she felt, he felt. So he was gentle with her, and she with him, and as they found a steady rhythm he kissed her as much as he could. There was something euphoric about feeling her heartbeat quicken, her fingernails dragging across the skin of his back, and he clung onto her as tight as he dared without hurting her. She was perfect; supple, but guiding his clumsy movements, reassuring him with her trailing mouth. She was so alive. Fuck, she was so beautifully alive. Chest heaving and sweating, he pushed deeper into her. There was so much sensation it almost hurt. It was impossible. He couldn't - he couldn't do this. And yet he was. Fuck. _Fuck._

When he came she cried out, holding him inside of her, keeping that one transcendent moment for as long as possible and - and _laughed_.

"You, Marlon," she said breathlessly, eyes closed, "are a funny old thing."

He stared at her, struggling to get his breathing under control. There was a sheen of moisture on her skin, so she shone in the lamplight.

She opened one eye. "Lie down, idiot," she said, and patted the sheets next to her. The soldier did as he was told, and found that his brain was getting rather… sluggish. It was such an alien sensation that it took him a moment to recognise it as tiredness.

Mimi folded one arm behind her head and turned to face him, running the thumb of her other hand across his jaw. "You, my darling," she told him, "are seeing the elephant."

The soldier frowned. "You're not that –"

"Not me, you foolish man," she laughed, "it's a turn of phrase. If you want to run away from this mess, I would understand. You're not just the soldier anymore. You're James Barnes."

Some of the white space in his brain dislodged itself, and the soldier felt a familiarity to this situation – lying in bed, half-asleep, with a girl. Not Mimi. Next moment, the memory was gone.

"I don't know who that is," he said. "You're in danger. I'm staying. We should move…" before he could finish the sentence, he found himself yawning.

Mimi laughed. "Sleep, darling," she said, "allow yourself this one night to stay still." She kissed him, and the soldier felt the pull of slumber, too strong to resist. "You've had a very busy day."

%

The former house of Emil Klein blazed in the red light of dawn, flames climbing to join their mother sun in the sky. Across the street, in the shade of a Parisian balcony, the soldier sat with Mimi and watched as the expensive white paint on the bricks melted away to reveal the black, charred mess underneath.

"Waste of a pretty house," Mimi said, her voice as cold as metal in Siberia. "Now what?"

"London," replied the soldier. "The coordinates are for one of the bunkers used by the government in the old war. I radio back to command, tell them where we're going –"

"And then the weapons become Russia's," Mimi finished for him, "the power to wipe out humanity in the hands of Daddy and his friends." She gnawed on her thumbnail and looked out at the raging fire. "And _me._ Will you tell him I'm the only one who can activate it?"

The soldier nodded. "I have to disclose all intelligence," he said. It was funny; he had never really questioned that before.

"What if I just – just tell someone else?"

"Then they'll kill you," the soldier replied. "Being the only key makes you irreplaceable. If there's a spare, you're dangerous."

"They won't kill me," Mimi said in a tremulous voice, "not Ivanov's daughter."

"You're not as important as you think."

Mimi laughed weakly. "Marlon," she said, "you do know how to make a girl feel special."

The soldier realised she was shaking. Mutely, he reached out and took her shoulder in his right hand, and stiffened as Mimi leaned into him. "While there's no surplus you'll live," he said. "They'll kill to protect you. _Die_ to protect you. Right now, you're the most valuable person in the two worlds."

"I'll never be able to leave my room," she whispered. "Let alone Russia. Tell me – do you really think that's a life worth living?"

The soldier didn't answer. He didn't know enough about living, anyway. But instead – slowly, having to actively think to do so – he relaxed, slowly unwinding muscle by muscle, and concentrated, not on the threats and dangers of the world outside, but on the now-familiar smell of Mimi's hair.

"The files with the nukes' location were encoded," Mimi told him, and he blinked at the sudden change of topic. "I grew up with that code, but the Americans didn't. How long until they figure it out?"

"Eighteen hours," the soldier guessed. "And another day to decide and get the approval from the White House to go to London. A few hours of arguing over whether to sync with MI6, which they won't do until the codes are property of a US agency, so they'll go slower to avoid gaining British attention. They'll assemble forces, and wait until night to converge. They'll reach the nukes in a week, under cover of darkness."

"What about us?"

"We're smaller, faster. Smarter. We'll be there in three days. I'll contact base when we're across water, away from the White Storm house." He stood up. "We're done here."

"Hang on," said Mimi, following him as he slipped away down the external staircase, "don't you want to talk about it?"

"About what?" the soldier asked, glancing both ways down the alley before walking through it.

"James Barnes!" Mimi cried. He could hear the sharp _clack_ of her shoes as she hurried after him, the _slip_ of silk stockings rubbing against each other, every sound contributing to a perfect mental image of her built entirely of noise. He could do it with anyone, anything; recreate them in their entirety based on the perception of just one of his senses. "You know, the cowboy war hero?"

"Cowboys are from the south," the soldier replied, "not Brooklyn." Then he stopped walking, and felt Mimi collide with his back.

He didn't know how he knew that.

"See?" Mimi insisted, walking in front of him and folding her arms. "You can't just brush over it, Marlon."

The soldier's head hurt. He still felt groggy from sleeping, and right now he didn't want to deal with a spoilt heiress trying to tell him what to do. "Get out of the way."

"Not until you've –"

He grabbed the front of her shirt and pushed her aside, then dragged her along behind him. When she shrieked, he moved his hand to her mouth to stop the noise, felt the warm wetness of her tongue pressing into his soot-stained fingers –

 _"How dare you hurt a girl, Bucky Barnes?" The hand, cracked and raw from cheap washing powder, came whistling around and clipped him on the ear. Bucky wailed as pain throbbed through the side of his head. "You know you aren't allowed to play with girls!"_

 _"She was laughing at me, mom!" Bucky cried._

 _"You think I give a damn what she was doing? It's_ me _you have to worry about!" his mother barked, then sighed as her son continued to cry. "You're a state," she said, and pulled a graying handkerchief out of her sleeve. "Spit," she ordered, holding it out in front of him. Bucky did as he was told, and she rubbed the tears and snot off of his face until it was red-raw clean. "That's better. Now what do you say?"_

 _"Sorry, mommy."_

 _"Never mind me, young man. You go and apologize to_ her. _You never,_ ever _hurt a girl again, you hear me?"_

 _"Yes, mommy."_

 _"And be quick about it. Your supper's nearly boiled, and your brothers are waiting for you, Quick! Apologize and be done with it!"_

The soldier's brain snapped back into the present with a white hot flash and he jerked away in horror. "I'm sorry," he panted, as Mimi shrunk away from him with a red smear of lipstick across her lower face. "Fuck. _Fuck._ I can't…"

He balled his hands up in his hair and collapsed against the wall, trying to pull the memory he had just relived out of his head. How did it get there? It wasn't him. It _couldn't_ be him. And yet it felt real. More real than anything. Well, almost anything. Anything with the exception of last night.

He tried to reconcile the snotty, bawling kid with himself and felt pain lance through his head, along with echoes of trigger words kept safe in a red leather book. He was the Winter Soldier. _LONGING._ He was Bucky Barnes, son of James and Ann. _RUSTED._ He was Russian. _FURNACE._ No, fuck that. He was Brooklyn, born and raised, Brooklyn to his bones. _DAYBREAK._ He was a sergeant. _Seventeen._ He was a weapon. _BENIGN._ He had people to protect. _NINE._ He was depersonified. _HOMECOMING._ He had to recall Emilia Ivanovna _ONE_ he wanted to fuck Emilia Ivanovna _FREIGHT CAR_ he was alive, dead, alive again, born anew from blood and hate and snow –

"Marlon!"

 _Ready to comply._

Muggy Paris air rushed over his skin as the soldier stood up with remarkable speed. No snow, not here, not now. Just an objective to complete. "Calais," he said. "By midnight. Travel by darkness."

"But you just collapsed! You need to stop for a moment!"

That was the last thing the soldier needed. If he stopped, then memories would start crawling back in. And when that happened, he would lose control again, which he would not do. He was in control. He was not weak. He was the Winter motherfucking Soldier.

"Listen to me," he ordered Mimi. "We do not have time for this. James Barnes is dead, you hear me? Dead."

"But –"

"Please."

He didn't mean to say that. It certainly wasn't the soldier talking, that was for sure. But it stopped Mimi bang in her tracks, which was a mercy. "Fine," she said, and wiped the lipstick from her face with the heel of her palm. "I know a man in Calais with a boat who doesn't ask questions. Will that be good enough for you?" Her voice was barbed, and he was surprised at how deep it cut him. The soldier was not supposed to… feel.

Perhaps he should just shoot her in the head and deal with the consequences later. At least then he would get some peace.

 **A/N quite a jam-packed chapter, all things considered.**


	8. Chapter 8

The captain of the small fishing boat was called Noah. He was wizened, too frail to be any kind of threat, and stank of the tobacco pipe that was wedged between his teeth. He agreed to ferry them across the channel for half of the money they had left and a kiss from Mimi, and the soldier completely ignored him as he headed into the murky bowel of the vessel. It looked, by the mismatched assortment of crates and their various stencilled markings, as though Noah was a purveyor of illicit goods and substances. Of course he was. He knew Mimi, after all.

"You were very rude back there," Mimi said, joining him an hour or two later with that same tobacco smell clinging to her shadow. She had talked almost the entire journey from Paris to Calais, and almost entirely about nothing. He had not listened. "He's a very interesting man once you get to know him."

The soldier, who was sat on a pile of nets with his back leant against a salt-browned crate, said nothing. The rocking of the boat was enough to make someone fall over, but Mimi managed the walk across to him with barely a wobble. She sat at his feet, her hand on his leg, fingers cold enough to be felt through the fabric of his trousers. She had cleaned off her make-up and Noah appeared to have lent her a massive and hideous knitted sweater in order to stave off the frigid Channel winds.

"Talk to me," she said. "Not about James Barnes, necessarily. Just… anything. Tell me what you're scared of."

He blinked at her. "I'm not," he said.

"Everyone's scared of something. I, for example, am scared of Daddy dying, and any bird larger than a pigeon."

The soldier felt himself smile, and didn't bother to hide it. "Why?"

"Because they'll peck out my eyeballs," Mimi said with a shudder.

"No. Your father."

"Oh." She looked down, and drummed her fingers against his shin. "I suppose it _should_ be because I love him. And I _think_ I do, but the fact that I have some doubt about it is probably not a good thing. But to be honest with you, Marlon, I think I'm scared because if he dies, I'll be powerless. No money, nobody left to care about me or send assassins to rescue me from tricky spots. I shall be utterly alone in the world, and I don't think I am very good at looking after myself. I tend to get into a mess."

There was a long silence.

"You."

Mimi looked up. "I'm sorry?"

"I'm scared of you," said the soldier. "If I have to choose. You're unpredictable. That's dangerous."

Mimi beamed at him. "I don't think that was meant as a compliment, but I'm going to take it as one," she told him, and edged closer up the nets until she was knelt in between his legs. "Do you trust me?" she asked him.

He thought about this. "No."

"Shame," she said, her hands evenly places at the top of his thighs. "And if I asked you to trust me?"

"What for?" he asked.

"I'm going to go down on you," she told him, fingers creeping towards the buckle of his belt. "Close your eyes and put yourself in my hands. And mouth." She leaned forwards, her lips at his ear. "Give me control," she whispered.

"I…" the soldier began, and swallowed. "I can't." Fuck. _Fuck._

He could feel her freezing fingertips creeping beneath the band of his trousers. "Trust me," she breathed.

"Mimi, don't. Please."

Her hands vanished and she moved off of him. That word again, achieving far more than any order, beg or command. "What is it?" she asked him. "What did I do?"

He drew his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, drawing his body together into a tight, uncompromising ball of steel. "Nothing," he muttered.

"Then what is it?"

"I can't do it."

"Do what? Enjoy yourself?"

"Lose control," he said, glaring at his knees. Stupid fucking weak and useless –

"Oh, Marlon," she sighed, and he hated that he could hear pity in her voice. "You are a curiosity."

%

"You have a radio?" the soldier asked Noah, when they were well away from France and Dover was, in the distance, a white smudge over black water, under black sky. The captain (was he a captain if there was a crew of only one?) nodded and pointed to a large black box on the control panel. The soldier took it, moved as far away from Noah as the radio's cords would allow, and pulled the face of it away to reveal the circuitry inside. After a few minutes of tinkering, he found a channel he knew to be monitored by the KGB and sent a message out on the wavelengths, containing a brief and encoded explanation for his absence and the coordinates they were headed to. Noah sat and watched him as he did it, puffing away on his pipe.

"You a pinko?" he asked, as the soldier returned the radio to its original position. "Or are you a runaway like her down below?" When the soldier didn't answer, Noah continued to talk. "Funny fella, aren't you? Could swear that I've seen your face somewhere before."

The soldier's fingers clenched around the gun strapped to his thigh. He was wearing a heavy oilskin coat over his combat gear, so Noah didn't seem to notice the movement. "You haven't," he said, through gritted teeth.

"If you say so. I got you some transport to London sorted with a few more of Mimi's, ah, friends," said Noah, and wheezed at an unexplained joke. "You look like you need a holiday, anyhow. You fucked her yet?"

The soldier spun round, pulled the handgun out and pressed it into the dead centre of Noah's forehead.

"I – I didn't mean nothing by it!" the smuggler spluttered, going cross-eyed as he tried to keep the weapon in sight. "Christ! Lemme live, sir!"

"Don't talk to me," the soldier growled. When Noah nodded, his lips pressed so tightly together they were turning white, he turned on his heel and marched back down into the hold.

%

England was cold. The wind was laced through with salt, which meant it somehow managed to sting more than the Siberian gales. "Did you upset Noah?" Mimi asked him, stamping her feet to keep warm. "He seemed a little… twitchy when we said goodbye."

The soldier didn't answer. They were waiting in a backlot of the Dover dockyard for Mimi's "friends" to arrive, and he kept mistaking shadows for Americans.

"Fine," she said, "I don't know why I asked."

The soldier considered this, and the frosty tone it was said in. A small, unfamiliar word climbed down from the murky recesses of his brain onto the tip of his tongue, and clamoured to be said. "… Sorry."

Mimi looked at him. "Where did _that_ come from?" she asked.

"Brooklyn."

She sniffed. "And there's me thinking the Americans had no manners," she said, and laughed at her own joke. "Which reminds me – what ought I call you?"

He looked at her. "What?"

"I mean, what name would you like me to use? We know you're James now, so –"

"No," he interrupted, "I'm not. Not that."

She nodded. "Marlon it is, then," she replied, "I prefer that, anyway. This'll be them, by the way."

A fleet of sleek black cars were pulling into the yard. "Subtle," he said aloud, and she smirked.

"I wouldn't suggest saying that to their faces."

The cars pulled up, a millipede line of money, and the soldier tensed into a position from which it would be easy to get his weapons. He was calm, though; calm and somewhat sceptical about how dangerous these people really were. And then the first one got out of his car, and the soldier could have recognised those tattoos a mile off.

Shit.

The soldier grabbed Mimi's arm and dragged her round the back of a shipping container so that they could not be seen.

"Bratva?!" he hissed. "Your _friends_ are the fucking _Mafia?_ "

"What did you expect?" she asked sweetly. "Hippies?"

"I'm supposed to kill them on sight!"

"Why?"

"I –" he stopped. The command was there, sat snugly in the back of his head, but it didn't go into much detail. "It's what I was made for," he said.

"Oh, Marlon –"

"Don't. We have to get out of here."

"And then what?" she asked. " _Walk_ to London? Steal a car like the Yanks are expecting us to and get caught before we're halfway there? I've been friendly with the Vor for years, they like me plenty enough to help us both. If you're with me, they won't hurt you."

"That's not the problem."

"And you won't hurt _them_ , either. Okay? Or the entire world's going to go up in smoke." She took his hand from her arm and held it tightly in her own fingers. "Trust me. And if you can't do that, then at least hold your fire unless _they_ shoot first."

Before the soldier could answer, Mimi strolled out from behind the container and hauled him along with her. While they had been talking, a small army of the thieves-in-law had assembled, a motley regiment of scars and tattoos.

The Vory v Zakone were at their most influential inside Russian prisons, but they had tentacles throughout both sides of the Iron Curtain. Since they liked to make a show of sneering at the Soviet rule it was only natural that Mimi knew them, but for the soldier it was a struggle to fight every instinct to pull out his handgun and shoot them all in the head before they could say commie bastard.

Mimi walked straight to the smallest one, who was shaven completely bald and was almost completely black from his blurry inked skin. The tattoos of the Vor were their language; you could know everything there was to know about a man before he had even opened his mouth. This man in particular was marred with fake eyes tattooed across the lids of his real ones, which meant that he was more likely to be a spy or informant than the boss since the tattoo meant, quite simply, that he was watching. But to have any markings at all meant he was fairly important. Mimi had friends in the lowest of places, it seemed.

"What the fuck is that doing here?" he asked, in a thick Georgian accent.

"He's with me," Mimi replied calmly. "Where's Evsei?"

"Waiting. It's not coming with you. Christ, Ivanovna, what were you thinking? We don't fuck with Soviet shit, and especially not with the Winter Soldier. I'd kill it now if I wasn't about to piss myself looking at it."

"He's here as my bodyguard," Mimi told him. "He won't hurt you – will you, Marlon?"

The soldier gritted his teeth. "… No."

"Good boy. He's in this car here, is he?"

The vehicles were just as decadent on the inside as they were on the outside. Black leather was everywhere, of a much richer kind than what the soldier wore; the Vor were the epitome of opulent resistance, the very thing the Soviet state were trying to stamp out. They were practically American.

Waiting for them on the wide back bench was a large, Ashkenazi man clad in a finely tailored Italian suit and a bristling, Stalinesque moustache. If he had tats, then they were not visible. "Mimi," he said in a smooth, unctuous voice, "I see you've brought a pet."

Mimi crossed her legs. "He's not a danger to you," she said.

"He killed my brother."

"Your brother was a serial rapist who eloped with the daughter of a commissar, Mr Agron. Is that really a surprise?"

"Still," said Agron, twirling his cufflinks. "That's my blood he spilled."

"It was nothing personal."

Agron smiled. He had a gold tooth, which glinted dully in the early English light that filtered through the tinted windows. "A fair point," he purred. Out of the corner of his eye, the soldier just noticed the shudder that ran through Mimi. She had, perhaps, been exaggerating when she had called this man a friend. "Then, for now, I shall not personally hurt him. You are headed for London, yes? I have asked around, and the coordinates lead to some of the old underground war tunnels. What are you doing, going to a place such as that? A nice little thing like you doesn't belong underground."

"I couldn't possibly say."

"Your father doesn't approve."

"He doesn't know."

"Oh," said Agron, "really? I wonder why he's offering two hundred thousand rubles for your pretty peroxide head, then."

Shit.

"He –" Mimi began to say, but her voice caught in her throat and she had to start again. "You're lying. He already sent the soldier after me. He wouldn't –"

"Oh, Mimi, but he would. And he has. As much as we resent working with the Soviet State, money is money. Don't do me the discourtesy of reaching for your gun, soldier. You know us, don't you? You'll be incapacitated before you can pull the trigger."

"Marlon," Mimi said, "please, we have to get to London, we can't –"

What could he do? Agron was right. They wouldn't kill him – it wouldn't be worth the trouble – but they could sure as hell take him out and take Mimi for themselves. It was a simple choice: go with them and remain able, or get shot and disciplined for letting her get out of his grasp when he returned to Siberia.

But Mimi… She was so fiercely determined to stop the Yanks getting to the nuke – no, not just the Yanks. The Russians, too. She could so easily tell Agron about the White Storm's weapon and they could disable it before she and the soldier even got back past the Iron Curtain – but she hadn't breathed a word of it. She didn't trust either side.

And, despite the walls that they had built inside of his head, the soldier didn't either.

Shit. Again.

"Shut up," he told Mimi, "or you'll get someone killed."

As Mimi's cheeks flushed Agron laughed a deep, belly laugh. "If I didn't have to hate you, puppydog," he said, "I think I'd quite like to have you for myself." He knocked on the screen behind him that separated them from the driver's seat. "Back home please, Aleks."

"Bastards," said Mimi, "both of you. Damn you both to hell and back."

"Emelia, Emelia. I think we've all trodden that road a few times before."

 **A/N I have returned from the void with chapters, hurrah. Fun-ish fact: Evsei Agron was a real dude, with a real moustache. He ended up in America towards the tail end of the cold war and until he killed he was a very, very rich man. Also, I feel like writing about Russian Mafia might get me shot. I hope I don't get shot. I'm actually quite harmless.**


	9. Chapter 9

The Vor drove them to some place a little outside London, a nondescript mansion (if such a thing were possible) and shut them in what must have once been a pantry, or maybe a wine cellar. It was suffused with the type of damp that could only be found in deep underground rooms. The door, which the soldier inspected immediately, was padded and bulletproof with the lock mechanism embedded deep and safe inside. The room itself was furnished with two buckets, a paper-thin mattress, a single frumpy lamp. The wall was pockmarked by scratches and bullet holes.

"Hippies would've been better," said the soldier. Mimi replied with a sniff. She wasn't talking to him.

"Probably." She looked down her nose at her fingernails, running her thumb underneath the varnish so that it flaked off.

"We're going to London," he said. "We're going to get out of here and get to London."

"You've rather shit upon that idea by letting the Vor kidnap us, Marlon," she said in an icy voice.

"I've got another one. A better one."

"Really?" she said, without looking at him. "Do tell."

"I'm going to go down on you," said the soldier, which finally earned her attention. She looked up, a coyness in her eyes, and slowly moved her legs apart. He noticed that, apart from stockings and suspenders, she hadn't bothered with any other underclothes that day.

He moved onto all fours and crawled forward, between her knees with his hands sliding up her thighs. With her skirt pushed up past her waist she slouched down the wall until she was on her back, and reached down to run her fingers through his hair.

"Wait," she told him, and he paused. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"I can figure it out," he said, pressing his mouth against the inside of her leg. She whimpered a little and her hands tightened in his hair; he took hold of her hips and held her still as he licked his way up the soft inner curve of her thigh. Mimi made the same sound again and hooked her legs over his shoulders, which he took as a good sign. Slowly, cautiously, he moved further upwards and inwards finding warmer, wetter skin, gaining louder, better responses from her. He remembered how it had worked before, how it had _built_ , and gradually increased the pressure of his mouth on her, changing what he did depending on what seemed to trigger something more significant, and realised he was actually… enjoying himself.

Huh.

She was wet now. That was probably a good thing. He went out on a limb and started to use his fingers too, curling them just a little inside of her as his tongue did most of the work. A moan came out of her that he felt from the base of her stomach and her legs tightened, locking him in that position. Good. He could work with that.

"Don't stop," she panted, "Jesus Christ, Marlon. Don't stop."

He stopped, withdrawing all contact but still close enough for the pattern of his breath to tease her. "Say please," he ordered.

"Oh, you… bastard…" He ran the tip of his tongue across her, just the lightest touch, which made her buck. " _Please."_

He pressed his mouth against her, tongue flat, fingers reaching. He felt the energy pulse through her as she came and didn't move away, kept probing until she relaxed and her slumping limbs unfolded around him.

Mimi laughed again, just like she had done in the house of Klein. He wondered if everyone did that, or just her. "You son of a bitch," she breathed, eyes closed, delirious smile on her face. "You motherfucker, you."

He sat back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and licking away the final residue of her on his skin. "You ready to work with me now?"

She opened one eye. "Did you only do that to get me on your side again?"

"Are you?"

"Did you?"

They stared each other down.

"Fine," said Mimi, "it worked. Yes. So – what's your _actual_ idea?"

"I'll need your gun."

"They frisked us," said Mimi, and the soldier raised an eyebrow. With a sigh, she plucked the derringer out of her garter. "Two shots left. Save one for me, would you?"

The soldier pushed out the cylinder and slid out one of the remaining bullets, then handed the gun back to her as he cracked the shell open with his teeth. Gunpowder spilled out onto his palm and he shifted over to the locked door.

Mimi came over and sat behind him to watch, resting her chin on his shoulder. "What're you doing?" she asked.

"Opening the door."

"I didn't think we could."

The soldier sifted the gunpowder carefully into the keyhole, which was only three millimetres across and far too small to let even a derringer bullet in. Then he pulled off his belt and used the buckle to lever open a panel of his metal hand, exposing the wires within. "Move back," he ordered.

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to damage your face."

"You're sweet," Mimi said, shuffling away.

The soldier bit into one of the wires with his teeth, wincing as the live end shocked his jaw and jerking his hand away. He proceeded to move himself as far away from the door as he could manage while still being able to touch it, and carefully positioned the loose wire over the key hole. Holding his breath to avoid even the slightest unforeseen movement, he pressed his hand against the door.

The ensuing explosion, muffled by the door's reinforced insides, shuddered up the soldier's arm and shook the bones of his shoulder. He ignored Mimi's shriek of surprise and allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as the resistance against his hand vanished, the lock's tumblers shattered.

"You know where we are?" he asked Mimi, turning around and holding his hand out to her.

"I can guess." She took it and let him pull her to her feet. "One of the Dvorets, yes? I heard rumours of one in the UK."

"'Your own prison you shall not make, but a palace for your brothers,'" the soldier said, pulling the phrase up from the annals of his carefully sorted and censored memory. "The pure Vor started hunting down the bitches, the ones who fought in the second world war alongside the Union, and they needed refuges - places outside the law where neither the Vor nor the KGB could hurt them. The bitches started buying up properties in Russia and imposed a no-weapons rule in them, and soon they started being used as common ground during the Bitch Wars."

"But I thought Agron was pure Vor."

"He went bitch when he agreed to hand us over," the soldier replied. The corridors of the basement maze they had been locked in were empty and sparsely lit, but he followed his nose and took whatever turning had the freshest air. Soon enough, they began to hear echoes of movement above. "Suki rules state no more than four men in a Dvoret at a time. The boss, the second, the brigadier and the apprentice."

"And the staff?"

"Gone home for the night. All Dvorets have a shodka in them –"

"Beg pardon?"

"Vor court for inaugurations. Boss swears them in and second witnesses. Brigadier takes minutes. They normally do the ceremony after the apprentice takes part in a big take."

"I'd say we're a pretty big take," Mimi said. "As takes go. So… we crash the shoddy-kuh and split some suki wigs, right? Shiv some bitches."

He stopped and turned around. "No," he said, "Mimi, no, just… just no."

"Sorry." They set off again. "What do we do, though? We don't have weapons."

They reached a heavy metal door, which the soldier shouldered open. Beyond it thick red carpets rolled down an opulent hallway, decked with portraits of old Russian royalty with their faces obscured by sloppy black paint. Eaves arced above them, each inscribed with one of the eighteen laws from the Vor's code of conduct. Forsake one's family, help your brothers, don't gamble irresponsibly… some were more intimidating than others.

The source of the voices seemed to be coming from beyond the stained double doors at the end of the corridor. The soldier cast his eye around the space, looking for something heavy enough to, say, cause serious damage to someone's skull. It didn't take him long to find something. "We improvise," he said.

"Marlon, do you know what this is?"

"Blunt object."

"It's an egg, Marlon. It's fucking Fabergé. You expect me to commit murder with this?"

"No," he said, taking the door handle with his human hand and readying the other for combat. "GBH will be fine."

"Oh, you bastard."

He smirked and opened the door, walking calmly into the room. Agron was stood in the centre with a young man knelt in front of him, unbuckling the boss' belt.

"I don't remember _that_ ever being part of the swearing-in ceremony," Mimi said behind him.

"Fuck!" snarled Agron, and turned around to his second – another large, heavily tattooed man. "How the fuck – never mind. Kill them both. They're more trouble than they're worth."

The soldier moved almost lazily towards the second as the brother raised his fists, his metal hand darting beneath them and grabbing the man's neck. He squeezed until he heard the vertebrae crunch, and turned around to watch Mimi club the brigadier around the back of the head with the Fabergé egg. That left the apprentice, who stumbled up and towards the soldier while pulling a knife out of his sleeve.

The blade crumpled against the soldier's shining left palm, and his other hand swung upwards and struck the apprentice on the chin. The boy stumbled backwards with a garbled cry as blood spurted out of his mouth, and he spat something that looked rather like the end of his tongue out onto the rug. The soldier grabbed the boy's hair, pulled his face up into his knee, and dropped him onto the carpet. The kid's face had been caved in completely.

"Marlon," said Mimi, and pointed towards Agron who was running towards the open window. Just as he managed to scramble up onto the sill the soldier grabbed his ankle and pulled him back down, hearing a quiet but satisfying _pop_ as Agron's knee dislocated with the sudden force.

"Do we kill him too?" Mimi asked.

"No." The soldier picked him up by the scruff of the neck. "He's too important. You don't need enemies. Follow me."

The soldier dragged Agron into the nearest kitchen and slammed his head against the large metal table, concussing him enough to be unable to get up but not so much that he was unresponsive. With the man slumped over on the table, he strode up to the ice box and started rummaging through it.

"Marlon," Mimi said pointedly, having followed him in. "There's _knives_ in here."

"Don't want to leave a mark," the soldier replied. "Don't want to give him a vendetta. It complicates things."

"I think we'll do that regardless."

"Not if he's ashamed," said the soldier, and pulled a bottle of cola out of the icebox with a satisfied grunt. "Don't watch this."

"I'm staying," she said flatly.

"Fine." He pulled the lid off the bottle with his teeth, placed a thumb over the neck and started to shake it as he crossed back over to Agron, reached around his waist and unbuckled his belt. As cola began to bubble up against his thumb with an almost furious intensity, the soldier pulled down the Vor leader's trousers and underwear, bent him double over the edge of the table, held him down by the neck and positioned the bottle between his legs –

"FUCK! Fuck, getoffame! I'll tell you! I'll tell you what you wanna know!"

"Where were you going to take us?"

"Vauxhall tunnels. Jesus Christ…"

The soldier moved the bottle upwards slightly. "Keep talking," he said.

"There's a tunnel leading from there to the Russian embassy. Whole underground complex. Built from the old WWII caves Churchill used –"

"Where the nuke is," Mimi interrupted. "Guess they were going to kill two birds with one stone."

"What nuke?" Agron asked. "There's a nuke?"

The soldier glared at Mimi, who bit her lower lip. "Sorry," she said. "Now what do we do?"

The soldier removed his thumb from the bottle and rammed it upwards.

"We're done here," he said over Agron's screaming. "London's calling."

 **A/N cue Clash music.**


	10. Chapter 10

**_Several hundred miles away, deep in a Soviet bunker_**

"You know, Ivanov, someday this 'bringing people back from the dead' business is going to bite us in the behind."

"Klein was never dead. The gas pulled him into a coma, that's all. And we pulled him out."

"Yeah," said the KGB bagman, "and why did we do that, again?"

Nikolai Ivanov was not a small man; he loomed over the bagman, and hunched shoulder and hooked nose, and storms brewed behind his eyes. "Mimi," he said. "And where Mimi goes, it seems, the Winter Soldier will follow."

"So? I thought that was part of his plan."

"It wasn't part of mine." Ivanov strode forward, pulling off his leather glove as he did, and used it to smack the sleeping Klein around the face. "Wake up, you little Nazi shit. We know you're listening."

Emil's eyes snapped open so fast it was almost unsettling. They were so bloodshot there was not a jot of white in them, but the poison had not killed any of their sharpness. He breathed in with a horrible, rattling noise, and gave them a rotting smile. "So," he rasped, "the Cold's most fearsome weapon is not a weapon. I guessed as much."

Ivanov reached behind him with his foot, hooked a stool and dragged it to the Nazi's bedside. "We know you've got a secret," he said calmly, taking off the other glove and tucking them into his breast pocket. "We know Agron knows it, but he's too embarrassed to tell us. There's not a lot of people who can humiliate a Vor. The Winter Soldier is one of them. Mimi Ivanovna is another. I gather you were also on the receiving end of their… antics."

"The couple wearing skulls, I assume you mean. They killed our honeytraps and slunk in under their names. I knew, of course. But it was fun to watch them dance. You think they did this to me? They don't have the balls. This was the Americans."

"Why?"

"We had something they wanted. You would want it too, if you knew what it was. Now they've got the treasure map, and I'm guessing your slut daughter has the key."

 _Oh, dear,_ thought the bagman, expecting Ivanov to kill Klein for a comment like that. But the Soviet ambassador just… smiled. Smiled and laughed. Somehow, that was scarier.

"You sent the Winter Soldier to be a nursemaid for your little girl," said Klein in that horrible, skin-crawling voice. "Didn't you? You're a fool. You should have sent her to be one of the Sparrows; one of the Widows. But instead you let her run off into the West, and now she has to power to kill this filthy new world. You -"

"So that's your secret," said Ivanov, and Klein's grisly façade seemed to flicker for a moment. "A weapon to kill the world with. Germans – you just don't know how to lose, do you?" He stood up, and the bagman drew himself to attention. "They're headed for the Doomsday Device."

The bagman's eyes widened as his heart dropped to the cold, hard ground. "I thought that was a myth," he said. "The White Storm's bluff."

"It's no bluff," said Ivanov, reaching into his breast pocket for his gloves. "Designed by Nazi abdicators that would later become part of Operation Paperclip, built by the Russians, and kept by Churchill and his dogs. Only one of the original inventors knew the key, and he was supposed to have put a bullet in his head ten years ago. I suppose that the Storm did it for him. We couldn't let the Americans know, but there were always whispers." The leather creaked softly as he pulled it snug around his fingers. "To them it was about as real as the Winter Soldier. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Klein." He reached back into his pocket, and pulled out a gun. "You've been very helpful."

 _Bang._

Blood ran along the railings of the hospital bed and began to drip onto the floor. "Clean that up," Ivanov ordered the bagman, "you see, there's no problem in raising someone from the dead if you drop them back down when you're done with them. And sort me out transportation to London. We should get there before the Yanks do, at least."

"Yes, sir," said the bagman, "but your daughter -"

"My daughter," said Ivanov, and grimaced. "You leave my daughter to me."

"But if she's compromised the asset… Nikolai, they'll kill her. Apart from thebeast itself, nothing's sacred to them."

"And apart from _her,_ nothing's sacred to me, you understand?! I will rip Hydra out of the Soviet States with my bare fucking hands before they lay a finger on my daughter and _nobody,_ not the KGB nor the Kremlin nor President fucking Breshnev himself will do anything, _anything_ to stop me! _Do you understand me?!"_

The bagman yelped something along the lines of "yes sir, of course sir, three bags full sir," and hoped desperately that he had not pissed himself.

"Good. Mimi Ivanovna will not be harmed, you hear me? She's got the key to the Doomsday Device, which makes her invaluable, and more importantly… she is my child. I'll shoot the metal-armed son of a bitch myself before they get to her. Now," he added, "get me to London."


	11. Chapter 11

London was hot, and dusty, and old with millennia of migrants and settlers weighing down on the Thames. It smelled sweet with sweat and late spring blooms – "I love London buildings," Mimi said to him as they sat waiting in the shadows outside a quiet, expensive café for a contact of Mimi's that she had promised wouldn't be a waste of time. The soldier, dressed smart and civilian in gloves and a fedora to hide his face and hair, felt uncomfortable but unrecognisable. "They build their walls out of roses here. Back in Russia, the walls are so high. You have to hide your wealth and your beauty. But here people show off, and the walls are made of roses."

"Show off," repeated the soldier. "Like you."

"Like me. You're beginning to get quite a mouth on you, Marlon. I'm not quite sure that I like it." She finished stirring her tea and set her enamelled spoon down with the softest of _clink_ s. "Are you sure you don't want anything?"

"We're not staying."

"That," said a smooth voice behind him, "you are not. Have I ever told you how much I love it when you bring friends, Mimi?"

"No."

"Exactly."

The soldier did not turn around to see who was talking, but instead kept his eyes directly on Mimi. "Who is this?"

"My SIS contact," she said.

"Abdicated," the voice behind him added, and Mimi raised an eyebrow.

"I recall you saying something about a dishonourable discharge, Jack. Something about a Red Swallow and the Serbian Prime Minister –"

"It's a little difficult to be a cut-out when you'll be shot on sight if you go east of the Wall. I don't believe we've been introduced, by the way. Jack Moore, English throwaway. And you are…?"

"You wouldn't believe him if he told you, Jack," Mimi said, smiling behind her sunglasses. The soldier reached out and nudged the silver teapot until he could see the reflection of the man sat behind him. Handsome, well-dressed, eyes hidden beneath shades and a wide-brimmed hat and seemingly absorbed in his newspaper. The waitress was giving him the eye, but not so much that she would notice him talking out of the corner of his mouth to the odd couple nearby.

"And to what do I owe this pleasure?"

"You know this city?" the soldier asked.

"Like a man knows his mistress."

"There's Americans headed for a weapon hidden somewhere underground," Mimi explained. "It's powerful – more powerful, we think, than anything we've ever seen before. The codes to detonate it used to be owned by a Nazi resurgence group by the name of –"

"The White Storm," said Jack, "we've met. Which means… shit, Mimi. You've got yourself in a real pickle this time. I'd bet my right hand that the weapon you're talking about is the Doomsday Device. I never believed it was real, but then, what else could it be? Not that it should matter unless they have the launch codes – they don't, do they? Nobody has the codes. If nobody has the codes, then nobody can _get_ the codes, and we have nothing to worry about. Nobody has the codes, have they? Tell me nobody has the codes."

Mimi shifted slightly in her seat.

"Oh, fucking hell," said Moore, "you know the codes."

"If we get to the missile before the Americans then the Russians would have the biggest bargaining chip in the history of mankind," Mimi said. "The war would be over –"

"Because we'd all be _dead_! The Doomsday Device isn't a missile, Mimi. It's a mine. A god-killing weapon sat right below the arse of where all the trouble is. It would be easy as pie to set it off, take out Europe, claim that the other side did it and launch a counter-offensive before you can say nuclear holocaust. It's not just a bargaining chip, it's blood on the enemy's hands. Everyone wants to warm up the Cold War, Mimi, but nobody wants to fire the first shot. With the Doomsday Device you could kill two birds with one _extremely_ radioactive stone."

"We're not paying you for your two cents, Jack."

"You've not paid me for _anything_ yet."

"Can you get us underground or not?" the soldier said, before their bickering sent him over the edge he was currently balanced on. "Because this feels like a waste of time."

"Oh," said Moore, "you think you can do this without me?"

"Yes."

"But we'd be a lot slower," Mimi interjected.

"Not if I left you behind."

"But you can't do that, can you? That would contradict your primary objective," Mimi countered, and the soldier gritted his teeth. "Marlon, please. When I told you Jack could help us, I wasn't doing it because I missed his company. He's the best smuggler I know."

"I'm not a _smuggler_ –"

"Shut up, Jack."

The soldier stood up so suddenly his knee hit the table and spilled Mimi's tea everywhere. "We have until midday tomorrow," he said.

"Seems a little arbitrary," Moore said, in a voice so low he must have thought the soldier wouldn't hear it.

"So are you," he replied, and Mimi's lip twitched upwards. "Get us out of the open."

"Who put him in charge?" the soldier heard Moore say to Mimi as they followed him.

"He did."

%

Moore lived in a small, luxurious apartment overlooking the Thames. He swept thousands' worth of trinkets off of his table and unrolled sheets of tracing paper, marked with countless red and black lines. Using whisky tumblers to keep the corners pinned down, he adjusted them so that they made a beautiful kind of web over a vast map of London.

"The top layer is the Underground network," said Moore, holding a glass of whisky out to the soldier. He took it before he could question why, and wondered if that was James Barnes doing the taking for him. "During the war it was invaluable for evacuating the city, due to the latticework of maintenance tunnels running between the systems. Pass me that file you nicked from Klein, will you?"

Mimi handed it over. Moore flicked through it like he owned the thing, and pulled out a grainy photocopy of a floorplan. "This looks like the deepest layer of Churchill's bunkers," he said.

"We guessed _that_. Can you get us there?"

"The official entrance is GOGGS –"

"Beg pardon?"

"Government Offices Great George Street," said the soldier, before Moore could open his mouth. "Carter had the Howling Commandos stationed there whenever we came off the…" he stopped as white-hot pain lanced through his head. "Fuck."

"You okay?" Mimi asked, moving closer to him.

He nodded, and took a massive gulp of the whisky. It burned like hell, which helped drag his mind back into the present.

"I'm missing something," said Moore, "aren't I?"

"Just keep talking, Jack." He felt her hand slip into his and squeeze his fingers.

"Right, well… with her majesty's treasury being ran out of GOGGS nowadays, it might be a tad difficult to walk in unnoticed. But Churchy's War Rooms are go a lot further than our government is willing to let on. You can get halfway across the city without leaving them – which means that we've got half a city's worth of entrances that we can use. The trick, my beauties, is figuring out which one."

Moore grabbed a pen and started circling parts of the map. "Thirteen entry points that will get you to the complex where they keep their super-secret weapons," he said. The soldier counted them, just to double-check the man's numbers. "Of those, seven are on the wrong side of the river and you don't have a hope of crossing it without detection." He scribbled over more than half the lines. "That leaves you with six, not including GOGGS. Two have twenty-four hour surveillance that's more trouble than it's worth to take down; _here_ and _here._ Three more have armed guards."

"And the one that doesn't?"

"Marble Arch? Would be your best bet. There _is_ an electromagnet in it that'll mess with any weapons, but you can pick up more once you're past."

"Not an option," said the soldier.

"Oh? And why's that?"

The soldier set down his drink and pulled the glove off of his left hand with his teeth. "Take a guess," he said, holding up his metal fingers so they caught the reddish glint of Moore's gaudy lamps.

"Bloody hell," said Moore. "There's an awful lot of myths coming to light today, hm? Colour me impressed."

"I'm not getting past an active electromagnet without setting off a whole lot of alarms," said the soldier, taking the pen and crossing out the circle by the Marble Arch tube station. "Tell us about the other three."

"Well," said Moore, "one of them's got a full guard because it's still an active government facility, so you'd waste a lot of bullets and time going through there. _This_ one has an entrance that's directly accessible in a public Underground station rather than a maintenance shaft, so you'd have an audience. And the third…"

"Jack," said Mimi, "you know I hate it when you pause for dramatic effect."

"It's… not accessible by a Tube station," said Moore, scratching the back of his neck. "It's a secret evacuation tunnel, only used in emergencies. The guards are more a formality than anything, but, well… the location…"

"What about it?" Mimi asked, and Moore tapped the last remaining circle. She leaned in to read it, narrowing her eyes a little. "St James' Park? That's not so bad."

"Not quite." Moore took the top sheet of tracing paper and pulled it half a centimetre to the left. Even the soldier knew the name that it was now marking.

 _Buckingham Palace._

 **A/N dun dun dunnnnnn. Also, THAT INFINITY WAR TRAILER THOUGH. AHHHHHH**


	12. Chapter 12

As he changed into his combat gear, the soldier could hear Mimi and Moore talking, laughing on the other side of the door as though they weren't about to break into the most famous house in the western world. He felt a twinge of something, a sour kind of anger that he could not join in. Jealousy. That was the word. Or maybe it was envy.

There was a mirror in the room he was changing in (there were mirrors in every room, in fact, because Moore was that kind of person; no wonder he and Mimi got on so well). The soldier stared at himself in it, tried to see someone he recognised, and found nothing. Was this what James Barnes had looked like?

There was a knock on the door. He grunted and watched in the reflection as Mimi came in, swaying around him and perching herself on the edge of a cabinet. She was wearing a suit, expertly tailored to fit the female form, with the shirt buttons undone so low he could see the creamy skin of her chest. "Eyes front, soldier," she said with her trademark coy smile. "Jack says I need to dress for easy movement. You know, he's got a better woman's wardrobe than I do. I've learned not to ask too many questions."

"I hadn't noticed."

"Funny. I told Jack about who you're supposed to be, by the way," she added, crossing her arms across her body. "Bless him, but for an MI6 agent he's terrible at faces. He said that Barnes' body was never found. The only reason they didn't peg him as MIA is because they thought nobody could survive a thousand foot fall into a Swiss ravine. I guess that's how you died. _Didn't_ die. Oh, I don't know."

"You trust him?" the soldier asked.

"Jack? He could have handed me back to Daddy a long time ago, but he hasn't. I think he's in love with me. Without sounding too vain, it happens a lot."

"And you?"

She smirked. "I'm in two minds," she said.

"Moore?"

"Love. Feelings are all very well and good, but that one in particular seems far too dangerous for me. People die for love. I'm not ready to die for anything, yet."

"Good. Makes my job easier."

"You don't have to lie to me anymore, Marlon," she said with a smirk. "I know you care about me more than you ever thought possible."

He glared at her. "Behave," he said. "Or we're all dead."

"Of course, darling. Anything for you." 

"Shut up."

Moore had a garage in the basement of his apartment building, filled with various deadly things and a sleek black Lotus Elan that even the soldier could see was beautiful. "Brand new," said the Brit with fondness, patting the car on the bonnet. "I bought the plus-two model this time round, so I could fit bodies on the back seats. Say hello to the nice Russians, Marilyn."

"Christ," said Mimi, "you're pathetic."

"Car rules," said Moore as she climbed into the back. "No food or drink, careful with sharp and flammable objects on the upholstery, and treat her as you would the Princess of Monaco. Oh, and I drive. Obviously."

The soldier slid into the front on the passenger side, and as soon as he was sat down Mimi leaned forward and rested her chin on his right shoulder like a parrot. "I have a question," she said.

Jack groaned.

"What's more important – the safety of the free world from being blown up from a nuclear mine, or me?" Her fingers crept up to the collar of his jacket, slipping around the nape of his neck and making his hair stand on end. "I just want to know how reckless I ought to be."

"Your continued survival is still our toy soldier's primary objective," Moore said, as they pulled out onto the road. "If I know anything about his type – and I do, intimately – he'll let the world burn if you walk away unscathed." 

"Sweet," said Mimi.

"Not really. It's in his programming. He really is more like a guard dog than a man. His mind doesn't work like yours or mine, Mimi – they shove a command in there and he'll follow it. Over a cliff if he has to. There's no agency, no independent thought. No feelings or –"

"I'm right here," said the soldier loudly.

"Then tell me I'm wrong," Moore replied.

He didn't. He couldn't. Mimi had to live. At the bottom of it all, when the rest of him was stripped away, that order sat in his head as tough as marble. It wasn't personal. It had nothing to do with the hot red lump in the base of his stomach that would rip the face off of anyone that tried to hurt her –

Wait. That was _definitely_ personal.

He twisted, grabbed Mimi's hair and pulled her into him, kissing her roughly over the back of the car seat. Once Moore had almost crashed the car in shock, he let her go and turned back to face the front without saying a word.

"Right," said Moore, "point taken."

The soldier didn't have to look at Mimi to know she had a smug grin plastered across her face. "You're being followed," he said, "navy Escort on your seven."

Moore glanced at his rear-view mirror. "So I am," he said. "Mimi, my darling, would you mind ducking your head down for a moment?"

"Is this going to be trouble?" she asked, slouching down into the back seat.

"It's just one of my friends," Moore replied. "Making sure I remember how… friendly we are to each other."

"Take a left." 

"So he can corner us?"

"So I can kill him," said the soldier, "where nobody will see."

"Dear God. You Russians have _no_ delicacy, do you?" Moore sighed, ignoring the next left turn and sliding between two fat red buses. "I don't kill if I can seduce or circumvent them first."

"I suppose that's how you make all your _friends,_ then," Mimi said. "By being slimy and spineless."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Moore swerved into the slow lane and lingered behind the bus, letting it overtake him and creeping back out behind it. Ahead the navy Escort took a left, assuming that they had done the same. "Ta-da."

"They'll be following you again tomorrow," Mimi pointed out.

"It's an endless game of cat and mouse we play. And cats, unlike Russians, enjoy playing with their food before breaking its neck."

%

Buckingham Palace, vast, squat and foppish, spread out in front of them behind high iron-wrought gates. "So what are we doing?" Mimi asked. "Shimmying up the drainpipe?"

"Don't be absurd," said Moore, "that would never work."

"Not at night," said the soldier. They both looked at him. "The windows get shut at night. Breaking one would set an alarm. During the day –"

"Well it's not during the day," Moore replied testily, "is it? Because you _insisted_ we come out here in the dead of night instead of –"

"Gentlemen," said Mimi, "if you could stop comparing dicks for a moment? We have a palace to break into and if neither of you tells me the plan in the next two minutes, I'm going to walk up to the front gate and start yelling until someone comes over and arrests me."

"Calm down, dear," Moore said, and Mimi gave him a withering look. "I don't suppose you read the _Times_ society pages, do you?"

"Take a wild guess."

"Well, you _must_ have heard of Princess Maggie."

Mimi's nose crinkled as she thought. "Small girl," she said, "lovely blue eyes, silly voice. I saw her in a nightclub with her favourite lover in sixty-six, I think it was."

"She's house-sitting for her sister while Liz does some queenly things at Windsor," Jack said, lighting a cigarette. "See the lights in the north wing? Coincidentally the same set of rooms where the entrance to our secret passage can be found, might I add." As he spoke, he moved his hand in front of the glowing end of his cigarette in an odd pattern. "And, as a close personal friend, I'm always invited. With a plus one, obviously."

A door opened, spilling glow and the sound of distant music out onto the faded red ground surrounding the palace. A very drunk-looking young woman tripped out of it and gave Jack a wave, which he returned cheerfully.

"Couldn't figure out how to get you in, old chap," he added, clapping the soldier on the soldier. "Not to mention you're hardly dressed appropriately. I suggest you go and find a drainpipe or something."

"But –" Mimi began, giving the soldier an imploring look.

"Go," said the soldier. "I'll meet you."

"We'll be in the room with the violet curtains," Moore told him, slipping his arm around Mimi's waist as the drunk girl approached them in a slow meander. "Don't be too long, or we might not want to leave."

The soldier backed off into the shadows and out of view as the girl ran up to the gate, fumbling with a heavy key to unlock it for them. He could hear their voices, high and happy, as they moved away from him into the warmth of the palace. As they walked, he saw Moore's hand slip down from Mimi's waist, following the curve and settling where the fabric of her trousers was tightest.

The soldier decided then that, if the Englishman were to end up in mortal peril anytime soon, he wouldn't make any effort to get him out of it.

Twenty minutes, two drainpipes and a ventilation shaft later, the soldier dropped silently onto the thick shag carpet of the royal private quarters. A man dressed only in a pair of stockings and a suspender belt was passed out in the corridor he had landed in, snoring loudly with an empty bottle of wine in his hand. The soldier took a handgun out of its holster, screwed on a silencer and stepped over him. At the end of the corridor he could see a room with a violet glow to it that sounded like a party and smelled like sweat.

He stuck close to the wall so that nobody in the room could see him as he approached, moving quickly and quietly with all his senses wired up to eleven. The closer he got the more he could hear: below the music, which had the crackle of a record player to it, he could hear laughing and… moans. There was a mirror opposite the doorway, which reflected the purple curtains and the light so that the haze of the room bounced out into the hallway. That wasn't the only thing the soldier could see in it, either.

Pretty much everyone was naked, or if not close to it – the most that the majority was wearing was a mask, or feathers, or strings of pearls that were half-broken and spilling the little off-white stones across the floor. People were sprawled across couches and tables and the floor, tangled together and writhing against each other with mouths on mouths and backs and tits and cocks and in the middle of it all, fully dressed, smoking a cigarette and reading the day's newspaper, was a small woman with shockingly blue eyes.

There was a part of the soldier's brain that recognised anyone of importance on either side of the Iron Curtain. Even without what Mimi had said earlier, he knew this was the princess. Actually, he probably could have guessed even without that. Who else would be sat with such poise in the middle of an orgy?

"Pssst! Marlon!"

Mimi hopped out of the room. Her jacket was gone, her shirt was untucked and her hair was escaping from its knot. "Thank goodness you're here," she said. "I'm getting too old for this stuff."

Somewhere in the back of the soldier's head, it clicked that her statement meant somewhere, somewhen, Mimi had done something like… like _that_ before.

Eyes front, soldier.

"Jack's been trying to chat up the princess," she told him, checking her lipstick in the mirror. "She knows where the passage is; he's trying to get it out of her. But I think she's moved on from him. It'd be fun to watch if we weren't otherwise engaged. What should we do?"

Behind his mask, the soldier opened his mouth.

"Don't say torture," she added, smacking her lips together.

He closed it again.

"Shit," she sighed, pushing a strand of hair back behind her ear. Back in the room someone shouted her name and she flinched. "Come on, we can't mill around out here." She grabbed his wrist and pulled him into a side room, filled with furniture shrouded in dust sheets. "I suppose we can always… check every door, and hope nobody notices."

"They'll notice you're gone," he said.

"I doubt it. Even Jack's barely given me a second glance since we walked in. It's the bloody princess," she explained, and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "She can't help but draw the eye. But as long as _she_ doesn't click as to what's going on, then we should be fine –"

"WHAT IN THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY PALACE?!"

"For fuck's sake!" Mimi exclaimed, as Princess Margaret stormed into the room.

 **A/N there comes a time in every story where its writer is like, "where am I going to take the narrative now?" Apparently, my answer to that was "royal sex party." Get on my level, Hemingway.**


	13. Chapter 13

"So – and please correct me if I am wrong – you've brought this Soviet hitman into the most secure building in the West in the hope that you can find a secret passage you've only _heard_ about but never seen, that will lead you to a secret bunker underneath London which holds a nuclear missile so dangerous it could obliterate the entirety of Europe; a missile which only you know the key to launching, and which you are currently racing against Russia, the US, and a small handful of Nazis to get to, so that you can disarm it before we all die horribly."

"It's more of a mine than a missile," said Mimi, "but apart from that… yes, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head." She offered the princess a new cigarette, which she took and lit with an engraved golden lighter. "Any questions?"

"People usually at least address me as ma'am," she replied, and took a long drag that left lipstick stains on the filter. Her lipstick was pinker than the colour Mimi wore, the soldier observed; light, bright, like roses.

"I'm a Red," Mimi pointed out. "We don't hold with that sort of thing."

"Hmm." The princess walked over to the soldier, who stood stock still and glanced over at Mimi, who inclined her head slightly. He was to humour this performance, then – this dance between two women, each proud enough to cut glass, seeing which would bow first. "Take off your mask, man with a metal arm."

He did as he was told. As he reached up to his face, Margaret's eyes flickered momentarily to his metal fingers, before returning to his face as though she had never wavered. She rose up onto her tiptoes, narrowing her crystal-blue eyes at him. Her breath smelled like Mimi's cigarettes.

"I've seen you somewhere before," she said.

"It's a long story," Mimi told her, and Margaret huffed. "He doesn't talk much."

"He's pretty," said Margaret, and it was Mimi's turn to huff. "There's a storm going on in his head, isn't there? I can see it."

"I never noticed," Mimi said coolly. "Well? Is the passage here, or not?"

"I haven't said I would help you, yet," Margaret said, a smile playing on her heavy English rose lips. She was still staring the soldier down, who was starting to get uncomfortable.

"And yet you haven't called your toy soldiers, either."

"I think that they would lose against this one." She tapped her cigarette ash onto the carpet. "Is it going to be dangerous, this little quest of yours?"

"Probably."

"How exciting. I guess I'll have to go and scrape Jack off of the carpet for you."

"I'll get him," Mimi said. "I couldn't possibly expect someone of _your_ breeding to run an errand for some humble commies." She walked out, slamming the door behind her with unnecessary force. All this time the princess hadn't taken her eyes off the soldier.

"What's she not telling me about you?" Margaret asked, taking a step towards him. The soldier took a step back. "Do you even talk? What's hiding behind that muzzle of yours?" She reached out and pushed some of his hair back from his face in order to see him better. "I'm sure I've seen those eyes somewhere before. They would be pretty difficult to forget."

"I'm nobody," said the soldier.

"So you _do_ talk! And nobody's nobody," Margaret added, dragging cigarette smoke through the air. "And that's coming from the forgotten baby sister of the biggest somebody in the world. If _I'm_ not a nobody, then there isn't a chance that you are, man with a metal arm." Her fingers slipped down to his mask, going for the catch that kept it shut at his jaw –

Mimi kicked the door back open, dragging a half-dressed and very sheepish-looking Moore behind her. "Found him," she announced in a very loud voice. "Stop trying to seduce my babysitter."

Margaret stepped smartly away from him. "I was only looking," she said. "He's not my type. I suppose that I'll have to show you this secret door then, shan't I? Or I'll probably be assassinated or something like that. It'd be an uproar."

"It's always an honour to see your passage, ma'am," Moore purred, and Mimi gave him a disgusted look.

"Never change, Jack," the princess sighed, picking up a candelabra from an ornate table and lighting it. "Follow me, please."

The soldier took note of the route they followed should his handler be interested in it during debrief. That should have been days ago, now, but he still could not see his mission ending in the immediate future. He never normally let things get this out of hand. He wondered if he would have taken such a massive detour had Mimi Ivanovna not been involved.

After several twists and turns that were most likely a failed attempt to get her followers lost, Margaret led them into a high-ceilinged bed chamber hung with green silks and tapestries. It had clearly been going unused, as the lights were all off and a fine layer of dust had settled over everything. She crossed to a bookshelf, holding the candles up to read the spines, pulled a book out and opened it. A small black key fell out of the binding; she put the book back and walked over to the other side of the room.

Her fingers pressed against the thick wallpaper, looking for something invisible to the naked eye. A small smile appeared on her lips as she found what she was looking for. The princess pressed the key against the wallpaper and cut through it, following an indentation in the wall up and around in a rectangle shape that seemed to be a door about five feet high and two feet wide. She felt the wall again, this time pushing the key in all the way into a lock that squeaked with unuse as she turned it. With the touch of her palm the door swung inwards, revealing a barren stone corridor.

"Come along, then," she said, stepping inside.

"No," said Moore, "absolutely not. You are _not_ coming with us, ma'am. It's out of the question."

"I'll do what I bloody well want, Moore. Besides, there's another few steps that only I know how to get past. You need me."

"You're lying," Mimi said, and Margaret raised an eyebrow.

"Is that a chance you're willing to take?"

Moore pursed his lips. "I knew this was going to happen," he said under his breath, and turned to face the Russians. "Don't either of you have a problem with this?"

"Not our princess," Mimi shrugged.

He turned away and swore. "Fine! Fucking… fine. But the slightest sign of trouble, you turn and run. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," Margaret said coyly.

"Take one of the dog's guns, too. I'm not having you unarmed."

"Is he talking about you?" Margaret asked the soldier, who nodded and handed her a pistol. "Very well, then. This way."

There were no lights at all in the corridor, and once the door shut behind them it was pitch black save for the orange glow of the candelabra. The soldier had to duck a little to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. The floor was uneven, too. The slope of it was leading them downwards. Soon the taste of the air had changed and he knew that they had gone underground.

"From what I've been told," said Margaret, "this tunnel meets the Q-Whitehall rooms. You can get to it via Trafalgar tube station too, you know."

"We _do_ know," Moore replied. "But we're not exactly a subtle lot, are we?"

"Hm." The tunnel opened up into an arched corridor, lined with bottle-green tiles and with thick, reinforced pipes running along the walls. It was about eight foot wide, and now that there was space Mimi fell back to walk alongside him. She was so close her arm brushed against his. "This is Q, I think. We're looking for scheme 2845A; that should take us straight to the old Cabinet war rooms."

There were doors set into the curved walls, marked with seemingly random strings of code that the soldier had seen earlier on Moore's maps of underground London. It was deathly quiet save for their footsteps, breathing and the occasional _whoosh_ of candle flame as it got caught in the ghost winds. The soldier kept an eye on the debris of old equipment and dismantled electronics discarded along the sides of the corridor. When he spotted a toolbox of rusty flashlights, he picked a couple up and switched them on, handing one to Mimi and the other to the princess. The soldier himself could see in the dark fine, and he didn't feel bothered enough to give Moore one.

The torch beams cut through the black far better than the discarded candlelight had, throwing odd-looking machinery into eyesight and casting strange, twisted shadows over the pipes.

"I must say," Margaret called over her shoulder as she led them, "this looks like an excellent place to keep a nuclear land mine. Very atmospheric."

"With all due respect, ma'am," Moore told her, "that isn't helping with anything."

"I was only making an observation, Jack –"

"Shut up," said the soldier, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

"I beg your –"

He grabbed the torch out of her hand, switched it off and clapped a hand over her mouth. Mimi turned her own flashlight off too and Moore raised his gun as they realised that something was wrong. "What?" whispered the British agent.

The soldier didn't reply. Instead, he knelt down slowly and pressed the palm of his right hand to the floor. He could just about feel the vibrations of footfall. A lot of very heavy footfall.

"We're not alone down here," he said. "And they're running."

"How far?" Moore asked.

There was no clear echo reaching them yet, which meant that, although the vibrations were close enough to be coming through the ground, the twisting tunnels still put a lot of space between them. "Ten minutes away," he guessed. "If we're lucky."

"Americans?" Mimi asked.

"Maybe. Maybe Russians."

"That's not any better," Moore hissed. "You think your people are going to behave any better with a nuke than ours? I told you before -"

The soldier stood up. "We need to move," he said, and turned to the princess. "Can you run?"

"Yes."

"Good." At this point, leaving her behind was too big a risk. She was a hell of a breadcrumb trail to follow. He switched the flashlight back on and handed it to her. "Then run."

And they did. The doors flashed past them and the soldier was the one to spot 2845A – he kicked it open, warping the metal of the door so that the lock was ineffective, and ushered the other three in before pulling it shut behind him and using his left hand to jam the hinges closed. They sprinted along the hallway to another door, this one made of wood, and barged through it into a low-slung brick bunker filled with cobwebs and crumbling whitewash. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm went off.

"You think that was them or us?" Mimi asked the soldier. Before he had a chance to answer, they heard the noise of gunfire shattering through the air.

"It doesn't matter now," said Moore. "Ma'am, take that door to the left and follow the red arrows until you come to a small toilet. Lock yourself in and wait for us."

"Have you gone _insane_?!" the princess snapped.

"It's Churchill's private bathroom, ma'am. Probably the most secure place in the world. If the fighting stops and we haven't fetched you after ten minutes, dial 767 on the red telephone and tell them it's a code 11. They'll get you out safely."

"But –"

"We don't have time to argue – _go!"_

"Be careful," Margaret told them, and fled.

Moore handed Mimi and the soldier earpieces. " _You_ need to find the nuke and disable it," he told the former. "Head for the big circular room in the centre. If it's anywhere, it'll be there. We'll cover you. Tell us when you've found it."

Mimi fumbled with the earpiece, putting it on with difficulty. "Don't die," she said. "Please. You two are my escape plan."

"Noted," said Moore. She kissed the both of them on the cheek before running off in the same direction the princess had. "I hope you're as brutal as you look," the Englishman added to the soldier as he took the semi-automatic that his ally was offering. The machine gun was getting closer, now. They could hear the shouts of the soldiers.

The soldier cocked his rifle. "I hope you're not," he replied.

And then, all hell broke loose.

 **A/N did a borderline ridiculous amount of research for this chapter. Even the codename of the tunnel they went down is accurate. I have a social life too, I promise.**


	14. Chapter 14

The soldier was bleeding. A bullet had caught the edge of his arm, tearing the leather and ripping the kin but, thankfully, not doing much more than superficial damage. Moore hadn't escaped so lucky; there was a lump of lead lodged in his shoulder, rendering one half of his torso pretty much useless, and his nose had been broken. Still, it could have been worse. They could have been one of the Americans.

It had been a squad of about twenty, fully outfitted and willing to bring the entire bunker down if need be. Now there were twenty bodies, not all of them whole, but every one permanently incapacitated. None of them had recognized him like they had in Paris. They didn't live long enough to get the chance.

"Not bad," said Moore, who was breathing heavily. "Don't suppose I could ask you a favour, could I…?" He gestured to his bad shoulder.

The soldier walked over, pulling out one of his knives. Twenty seconds, a trickle of blood and a small yelp of pain later, the bullet was out.

"Thanks, old chap." He winced as the soldier taped the hole shut. "Lovely bedside manner, too."

"Get the princess," said the soldier.

"What about Mimi?"

"I'll find her."

He followed the smell of perfume deeper into the complex, eventually opening a door into a vast circular room with higher ceilings than the rest and most of it railed off, with computers running around the outer perimeter. Mimi was stood with her hands on the railings, staring at the construction in the centre of the room.

It was about the size of a car, fourteen-sided, shining darkly in the strip lighting. The toxic symbol was painted on each side, in case someone had got this far without figuring out what it was already, and there was a computer embedded onto the side with a keypad and small screen that could be reached by a small, fenced-off walkway.

"You know when you're standing on a cliff," Mimi said quietly. "And despite the fact that you _know_ it's a terrible idea, there's still that little voice in the back of your head telling you to take one more step forward?"

"Don't," said the soldier.

"I haven't." She turned to look at him. "What do we do now?" she asked.

He looked over to one of the computers behind them. "Broadcast our location to the Kremlin," he said. "Wait for further instructions. If none come, we head back to Berlin."

"Right," said Mimi. She nodded, lips pursed. "Right." 

The soldier narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"It's just… what Jack said, about the East being no better than the West…"

"You think he'll try to stop us?"

"No. He's not brave enough for that. But – Marlon – if we tell Daddy and everyone about this, we could have the blood of millions of people on our hands."

"They might not detonate it." 

"They might not _have_ to. World's biggest bargaining chip, remember? All of Europe would be powerless to deny them anything. And they would have built in deniability, too. Nobody would have to know it was Russia. Half the reason the cold war hasn't heated up is because of what might happen if we were held responsible for it."

"Mimi," said the soldier. "You were the one who –"

"I know!" she snapped. "Just let me _think_ for a minute, you soulless bastard!"

Her voice rang around the otherwise empty chamber like bullets.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean that." 

"You had a point," said the soldier.

She smiled weakly and sat on the railing, knuckles turning it white as she gripped onto it. "What are we going to do?" she asked. There was a tremble in her voice.

She was scared, the soldier realised. More scared than he had ever seen her. The soldier found himself unable to think straight when she looked like that.

His primary objective was to protect Mimi Ivanovna. Whatever else, he had to do that. And… if he went against what she clearly wanted to do, there was no knowing what she would do… what trouble she would get into… he had to pacify her, yes. And there were no direct orders _to_ tell his superiors about this, anyway. They had only ever mentioned the importance of nuclear _missiles,_ and this was a _mine._

There were iron-clad walls in the soldier's head that he could not help but stay within, never damaging them, never going against them. But… there was, sometimes, a way _around_ them.

"Come on," he said, taking her hand and pulling her off of the railing.

"What?"

"We need to get to Berlin."

Her face cracked into a smile. "I'm rubbing off on you," she said.

"I hope not."

She steadied herself on his arm, her fingers slipping on the red-slick leather. "You're bleeding," she said. "You're hurt."

"So?"

"Oh, Marlon." She rose onto tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. The soldier hesitated just a moment before yielding to the kiss, but let his mouth open against hers and clumsily ran his right thumb along her cheek. This time was different to the ones that came before it; they were not hungry for each other. It was a comfort more than anything else. The soldier was not used to comfort. It made him feel vulnerable and safe, both at the same time.

Mimi let go first. "Come on," she said. "We need to get to Berlin."

She took the hand that he had left resting on her cheek and led him back out, following the bloody bootprints he had brought in with him. As they got closer to where the fight had been the bodies started to appear; slumped against walls, draped over shrouded machinery, in heaps on the floor. When it got to the point that they had to start stepping over them, Mimi let go of his hand.

"At least we took less than ten minutes," she said. "The princess won't have called for help. Unless she panicked. But she wouldn't do that." She pushed open a heavy metal door that had a bloody handprint smeared across the side of it. "Margaret's known for her sensible nature."

And then they walked into a room of guns, each and every one of them trained on their heads.

Margaret was stood in the middle of them, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and Moore in cuffs and on his knees beside her. "Sorry, all," she said. "I panicked."

Mimi reached for her derringer. The soldier grabbed her wrist and forced it back down before she could do anything. "You bitch," she breathed. "You stupid fucking bitch."

Margaret's face contorted, becoming heavier; less pretty, more cold and proud. "How dare you talk to me like that?" she snarled. "I am a _princess_!"

"And we're Russian," Mimi replied. "So I really don't give a damn."

Margaret nodded to one of the soldiers, who strode forward and cracked Mimi in the side of the head with the butt of his gun. She cried out in pain as she fell to the floor, and the soldier had to tense every muscle in his body not to leap on the man and tear him to pieces as he secured his ward's hand behind her back. Another man came forward to do the same to the soldier.

He had to think fast. The soldier had two options: he could fight his way out of the room and risk losing Mimi in the process, or abandon their plan of going back to Berlin and let the Brits take him and try to kill him and inevitably Mimi too. Either way he lost the girl. And that was not going to happen.

There was one more option. He didn't like it, but it was there. A chip implanted in his tooth that emitted a powerful distress signal straight to both Siberia and the Kremlin, only for use in absolute emergencies. It guaranteed a twelve-hour rescue regardless of his location. And it meant that he could get Mimi home alive. That was the mission. At all costs, get her home.

As the man advanced, the soldier spat in his face. It wasn't exactly the action of a trained super-assassin, but it did the job; the man's expression twisted in disgust and he swung his gun at the soldier's face without even needing to think, the suggestion of doing so having already been planted in his brain by what had happened to Mimi, the rage driving him and making him stronger, more savage. The soldier resisted his instincts to preserve his face and turned his left cheek to the gun, felt the butt of it impact his jaw and knock three molars out in a flash of blinding pain. He kept his lips pressed shut as he fell downwards, used his tongue to fish for the tooth that felt more metallic than the others and bit down on it with raw gums. He felt the signal burn in his mouth and spat out the other teeth and blood.

"Fucking pinkos," he heard someone say above him. Then he felt a needle press into his neck, and everything went black.


	15. Chapter 15

When the soldier woke up, half his face was throbbing from the hit. He opened his eyes to find himself tied to a chair in an interrogation room. The chair was bolted to the ground, which was never a good sign, and there was a two-way mirror set into the wall. The left side of his face was black and swollen with bruises, which if nothing else rendered him unrecognisable compared to what he had been before. Even without a mask, there was no way the Brits would know that he was James Barnes.

Even thinking the name sent a lance of pain through his head that had nothing to do with his physical injuries. The room shimmered and the soldier clenched his teeth – or what was left of them – in an attempt to stay grounded. He was still struggling when the reinforced door opened and a woman in a drab suit walked inside, dragging a stool behind her. She sat herself down in front of him, crossing her legs, and adjusted her glasses as she looked him up and down.

"So," she said in a brusque, English voice . "The legends are true. The Winter Soldier walks among us."

He said nothing, but drummed his heel against the floor and concentrated on the noise. His head felt like it was full of candyfloss. He wasn't sure what candyfloss was, but he was certain that was what his head felt as though it was filled of.

"What I have to wonder," she continued, "is why this near-mythical super assassin feared by intelligence communities the world over didn't put up more of a fight. Specifically, why you're sat docile in those handcuffs that you could break out of with no more difficulty than if they were made of cobwebs. I have no doubt, as a matter of fact, that if needs must you could get yourself out of here with no problem. But the girl – now, that's another matter."

"What have you done with her?" the soldier asked, before he could stop himself. Silence during interrogation was as simple and necessary to him as the reflex of killing on command; something he was not supposed to be able to go against, _ever._ But his head was pounding and the room was swimming like a dream. No. He didn't have dreams. _Fuck._

"Emilia? She's alive," said the woman. "And put up a hell of a lot more fight than you did. She's the reason you didn't try to escape, I presume. What are you, her nanny? We have records on the Ivanovs. Her father is eager to have her home. Sending you I would peg as overkill, but when has the USSR been lighthanded?"

 _"Since when have the USSR been lighthanded?" Peggy Carter said, the bulldog guarding the Howling Commandos from her superiors. "The aim of this unit, sir, is to use subtlety and skill to achieve missions that nobody else is capable of. If we were to accept help from the Russians, they would insist on round-the-clock surveillance that would severely limit the freedom of Captain Rogers and his men to carry out the tasks we so desperately need them to do."_

 _"I'm sure we can find a workaround," the MI6 man smiled. He was tall and greasy and wearing a suit that was slightly too big for him. Even in her heels, Peggy had to lift her chin to glare at him._

 _"Looks like we're getting a pinko on the team," Dugan muttered, and Bucky rolled his eyes. Beside him Steve stood there in his stars and stripes, frowning at the whole damn situation. It wasn't the idea of a Red joining them that was bothering his best friend, Bucky knew. It was that they would not have been chosen by Steve himself._

 _"Perhaps," said the oily man, "we should talk about this in private."_

 _"I don't think that's a good idea," Steve replied before Peggy could say anything. Seeing the look on the Brit's face, Bucky leaned over to whisper in his ear._

 _"C'mon," he said. "Leave it to the experts."_

 _Outside the underground conference room, Steve paced up and down while the rest of the Commandos watched him like a ball at a tennis match. Bucky, who had seen this behavior countless times before, leant against the wall and folded his arms._

 _"They keep doing this," Steve declared. "The 'powers that be' keep swooping down and thinking they know best as if they've been on the front line with us. They haven't! It's not fair!"_

 _"Neither's life, chap," Monty reminded them all. "We might just have to grit our teeth and bear it."_

 _The door clicked open and Peggy stuck her head out of it. "Sergeant Barnes," she said, "could I borrow you a moment?"_

 _Bucky smirked. "I'm just glad you've finally noticed me, ma'am."_

 _"I've punched men for less than that, you know." She held the door open for him. "Chop chop."_

 _The conference room was empty; the oily man must have left through the other door. "He's popped to the loo for a moment," Peggy explained. "Sit down, please. Tea?"_

 _"Sure," said Bucky, taking the cup she offered him. It was impossible to get a decent cup of coffee this side of the pond, anyway. "So why me?"_

 _"Because," said Peggy, taking the seat across from him, "as much as I admire Steve's unflinching resolve in the face of defiance, there are times when it becomes a bloody liability."_

 _"Tell me about it," Bucky said._

 _"You and I both know that the Howling Commandos are as much to fuel America's propaganda machine as it is taking down Hydra. It's not the way I'd like it to be, but I don't get a say in these matters. I have Brandt and Phillips making it quite clear to me that a Russian amongst America's favourite men simply isn't an option."_

 _"Rock and a hard place, huh?"_

 _"Quite."_

 _"So what d'you want me to do about it?"_

 _"To keep MI6 and the Russians happy, we need a compromise. In return for keeping the membership of the Howling Commandos as it is, they want one of you to…"_

 _"Sell out," Bucky finished for her._

 _"That's not how they would put it, but… yes. The vocal support of an American hero for the Soviet regime. I'm asking you, Barnes, because you're the only one in your squad who I don't think would put his pride before practicality."_

 _"I'm the closest to being a slimy bastard, you mean."_

 _"Oh," said Peggy sighed. "You have such a way with words. Look – I can negotiate a deal so that you don't have to say_ anything _until the war is over, should that ever happen. They're not worried about now, while we have a mutual enemy. But as soon as the Nazis are gone, the two superpowers are going to turn on each other like rabid dogs fighting over a bone. We have to keep the Captain America image squeaky clean, but his right hand man can be… convinced."_

 _"You want me to betray my country to keep Steve happy and safe."_

 _Peggy said nothing, but closed her eyes and nodded._

 _"I'll do it."_

 _Her eyes snapped open. "I beg your pardon?"_

 _"You heard. It won't be the first time I've covered Steve's ass without him knowing about it." He stood up. "My mom's gonna kill me, though. Her and the rest of Brooklyn."_

 _Peggy smiled. "You're a brave man, Sergeant Barnes," she told him, holding out her hand. He took it and shook. "Thank you."_

 _"Hey," he said. "This might not even be a problem."_

 _"Oh?" she asked, raising an eyebrow._

 _"There's no guarantee I'll live that long anyway."_

The soldier could not bear the pain in his head. He cried out, snapping the handcuffs open like straw and lunged off of the chair onto his knees. Somewhere above his head Peggy – no, not Peggy, _who the hell was Peggy_ stood back and was shouting something that sounded garbled and gibberish, like a foreign language played backwards on a half-tuned radio. He put his hands to his temples and screamed. It felt as though half his brain had been knocked loose. Maybe it had.

Big, gloved hands picked him up and hauled him to his feet. The soldier, unable to stand, felt himself being dragged out of the room and down a flight of stairs. Harsh strip lighting flickered and danced overhead like an aurora. He heard the shuddering of iron and the cold hard floor came up to greet him. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against it, digging his fingers into the concrete so hard that it crumbled at the touch of his left hand.

"Marlon? What the hell did they do to you?" Something soft and sweet-smelling ghosted across his bruised cheek.

"Nothing," said the English woman from a distant place. "Nothing at all."

%

Mimi sat on the floor, at his feet, resting her chin on his knee. She looked quiet and drawn; not like herself at all. How long ago it seemed that he had found her, immaculate and calm, tucked away in a bedroom in Venice.

"What d'you think they're going to do to Jack?" she asked. She had lain on the floor with him for two hours, soothing and calming until he was something close to sane again.

The soldier knew full well the answer to this, but found himself unable to say it. He would not bring Mimi any more harm today. "Brits don't kill their own," he lied. "They'll keep him alive."

She nodded. "Do you mind if I just… talk?" she said. "It keeps my mind from wandering." He didn't answer. "I used to think I loved Jack, once upon a time. I was young, and he was kind. I fell for anyone kind back then. It took me a while to realise that kindness is the mask of a good liar. It's the bastards you ought to trust. Love creeps up on you with those ones."

"I'm sorry," he said, and she smiled. It wasn't a happy smile. He was not good at emotions, but he could gather that at least.

"It's not your fault," she said. "We don't know what's going on in your head and neither do they."

"It's a weakness." 

"Weaknesses are nothing to be ashamed of. They make you human."

"But I'm not," said the soldier. "I'm… this."

She turned around and rested a hand on each of his knees, rising up on to her own as well. "Let me," she said. "Please."

"Okay."

She unbuckled his belt and he looked up, away from her, from both of them. He was hard already. Of course he was. Her fingers were cool from the damp air of the cell and he shivered from the cold and the sensation. Mimi must have felt it, for she reached out and took his right hand with uncanny gentleness.

"Trust me," she said, guiding him to rest his fingers in her hair. And suddenly her tongue was on him and he gripped the bench so hard with his left hand the wood splintered between it, and his breath juddered in his mouth as she moved, and he wondered how he had lasted this long without feeling like this, like pain but not, but _good._ And he was in her mouth and it was hot, wet, and the moan came out of him before he could stop it. _He was fucking Ivanov's daughter in the mouth._ It was difficult to breathe at all, now, difficult to _exist_ at all beyond himself in her, pushing against the back of her throat, blood throbbing, his brain in his cock and his cock between her lips.

When the soldier came, it was like a drowning man surfacing for air. He slumped on the bench, every muscle unwinding, chest still rising and falling as rapidly as if someone had just fought him to within an inch of his life. In a way, they had. Beneath, Mimi redid his trousers, wiped her mouth with her hand and rose to kiss him. Her lips were sticky, salty. There were still traces of him on her and in her. Good. It was just where he wanted to be.

"Daddy's going to be so upset," she murmured, and the soldier heard himself laugh.


End file.
